Katerina Semendeferi: UCSD Department of Anthropology

The organ of the mind, the brain, is the focus of several fields of study. This lecture will address the role of neuroanatomy in reconstructions of cognitive evolution. It will present new data on the internal organization of the brain of humans and great apes and will revisit, in a critical light, some of the older data sets widely used in primate evolutionary studies. The lecture will address the challenges of reconstructing cognitive evolution based on animals like the apes that cannot be studied invasively, the significance of including closely related taxonomic groups in studies of human evolution and the issues involved in transferring brain/mind data from animal models to hominids that are characterized by differences in brain size and socioecological adaptations.