Paul Mellars: University of Cambridge Department of ArchaeologyResearch over the past ten years in both DNA studies and archaeology has provided some remarkable new insights into the origins of biologically and behaviourally modern human populations, and their widespread dispersal from Africa to the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago. The combination of DNA […]

Scott Johnson: UCLA Department of PsychologyMental rotation (MR) is the process by which people imagine how an object would look when rotated into a different orientation in space; it may be related to performance on tasks like perspective-taking and navigation. Men typically perform faster and more accurately than women on MR tasks. Known influences on […]

Joseph Manson: UCLA Department of AnthropologySeveral studies have shown that, following brief interactions among strangers, subjects perform better than chance at predicting whether their co-subjects will defect in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG). However, previous work did not explore how such predictive accuracy was possible. Theoretical work suggests that adherence to “arbitrary” norms serves […]

Daniel Geschwind: UCLA Departments of Human Genetics, Neurology, and PsychiatryWe are interested in understanding how genes influence human cognition and behavior, leading to unique human cognitive specializations, such as language. Advances in molecular and statistical genetics now allow us to identify genes that may be responsible for the emergence of some of these human cognitive […]

Nina Jablonski: Penn State Department of AnthropologyHumans are distinguished from other primates by being functionally hairless over most of their bodies. This condition evolved because hairlessness facilitated cooling of the body by sweating. The evaporative cooling made possible by sweating results in whole-body cooling of blood flowing in superficial vessels, and the maintenance of constant […]

Athena Aktipis: University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyModels such as Maynard Smith’s Haystack model have shown that high rates of movement (i.e., migration, mixing, dispersal) undermine the evolution of cooperation. However, these models generally assume that movement is unconditional. The present model replaces the assumption of unconditional movement with conditional movement; individuals […]