Cognitive Evolution: From Single Cells to the Human Mind

✍ Scribed by David B. Boles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 397
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Cognitive Evolution provides an in-depth exploration of the natural history of cognition, from the beginning of life on Earth to present-day humans. Drawing together evolutionary, comparative, and neuroscience research, the book brings a unique cognitive perspective to evolutionary psychology.

The second edition features the latest research and illustrations on emerging topics, making it a true update of the field. After introducing evolution, Boles adopts an information processing perspective – from inputs to outputs, with all the mental processes in between to provide a systematic overview of the evolution of cognition, including its sensory, motoric, perceptual, and cognitive components. The combination of evolutionary, comparative, and neuroscience perspectives provides an insight on topics like vision, handedness, tools and planning, spatial perception, pattern recognition, memory, language, and consciousness.

Cognitive Evolution is a comprehensive, essential read for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of cognitive and evolutionary psychology. Researchers will find it a useful and insightful synthesis of the field, yet even the curious public will find in it much that is surprising and enlightening.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Endorsements
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
How to use this book
Acknowledgments
Section I: Introduction to evolution
1. Life begins
How did life begin?
... In a warm little pond?
... On clay surfaces?
... Around black smokers?
... In a nuclear geyser system?
... In space?
Membranes and metabolism
DNA world
One-celled life
The workings of evolution
Descent with modification and natural selection
Speciation
Is evolution random?
Conclusion
2. Life gets complicated
Fossil formation
Geological clocks
Molecular clocks
The linear molecular clock
The nonlinear molecular clock
The tree of life
The Cambrian explosion
Chordates
Conclusion
3. Vertebrates to early mammals
Early vertebrates
Biomineralization
Hox genes
Visual system changes
Gill arches as predecessors to jaws
Tetrapods
Amniotes
Synapsids and diapsids
Dinosaurs
Early mammals
Conclusion
4. Later mammals through primates
Early primates
The strepsirrhine-haplorhine divergence
The tarsier-anthropoid divergence
The platyrrhine-catarrhine divergence
New World monkeys
Early catarrhines
Old World monkeys
The ape divergences
Early apes
Lesser apes
Great apes
Conclusion
5. Humans
The first (Miocene) hominins
Ardipithecus
Orrorin
Hominins of the Pliocene
Anamensis
Afarensis
Garhi
Africanus
Hominins of the early Pleistocene
The emergence of Homo
The encephalization quotient
Ergaster and erectus
Hominins of the middle and late Pleistocene
Naledi
Sapiens
Neanderthalensis
Floresiensis
Hominin trends and connections
Size trends
Skull trends
Hominin phylogeny
A well-pruned bush
Conclusion
Section II: Sensation and movement
6. The mechanical and chemical senses
Early sensing
Touch
Mechanoreceptors
Tactile neural pathways
Balance
Hearing
Frequency selectivity
Origin of the ossicles
Smell
Olfactory genes
The formation of olfactory pseudogenes
Taste
Common trajectories in mechanical and chemical sensing
The other mechanical and chemical senses
Conclusion
7. Vision
The evolution of eyes
The genetic basis of eyes
Chordate and early vertebrate eyes
Color vision
Trichromacy
Night vision
Mechanisms for increasing light sensitivity
Acuity
The fovea's contribution to acuity
Eye and brain
Conclusion
8. The origins of motion
Single-cell organisms
Metazoa
Tetrapods
Amniotes and mammals
Primates and hominins
The fine-branch environment
The effect of large bodies?
The hominin background
Neural mechanisms of movement
The origin of contralateral organization
Cajal's proposal
A problem with Cajal's proposal
A modified proposal
Conclusion
9. Bipedalism
The causes of bipedalism
Efficiency
Climate change, foraging, and thermoregulation
Carrying
Why aren't other apes bipedal?
Consequences of bipedalism
The vertebral column and thorax
The pelvis
The arms and hands
The legs and feet
Conservation and change in motor patterning
Conclusion
Section III: Perception and cognition
10. Praxis and handedness
Praxis
Movement-related brain areas
The evolution of movement-related brain areas
The primate origins of handedness
A strengthening of PRH within primates? The roles of task and environment
Components of primate handedness
Components of human handedness
Genetic foundations
Family resemblances
Genetic models
Individual genes
Archaeological evidence
Why handedness?
Why left-handedness?
Conclusion
11. Tools and planning
Great ape tool use
Primate tool cultures
Defining culture
Social learning
Brain size and tool use
The evolution of grip
Human hand dexterity
The earliest hominin tools
Worked stone tools
Gona and Oldowan tools
The role of cognition
Later tools
Acheulean tools
Mousterian tools
Aurignacian tools
Gravettian and Solutrean tools
Magdalenian tools
Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian tools
Clovis tools
Comparison of ape and human tool behaviors
Increased hominin planning
Brain mechanisms of planning
The rise of area 10
The cognitive role of area 10
Understanding causality
Conclusion
12. Spatial perception
Location
Higher brain mechanisms for recognizing location
Depth
Motion
Quantity
Subitizing in humans
Subitizing in other primates
Orienting
The evolutionary background of orienting
Reaching and grasping
Navigation
Brain mechanisms in navigation
The independence of spatial processes
Evolution of the parietal lobe
Conclusion
13. Pattern recognition
Localized processes
Features and contours
General forms
Objects
Object classes
Visual agnosia
Comparisons between species
Global versus local bias
Global and local processing in other primates
Other pattern recognition processes and areas
Conclusion
14. Memory
Sensory memory
The peripheral component
The central component
The evolution of sensory memory
Short-term memory
Comparative studies of short-term memory
Working memory
Intermediate-term memory
Long-term memory and its divisions
Episodic memory
Semantic memory
Conclusion
15. Language
Representational capacity
Secondary representation
Vocabulary
Ape language studies
Grammar
The role of frontal brain areas
Broca's area
The role of perisylvian brain areas
The planum temporale
Inferior parietal cortex
Other temporal lobe areas
The hominin evolution of language: Language area changes
Broca's cap
Wernicke's area
The hominin evolution of language: Peripheral changes
The lungs
The ear
The jaw
The vocal tract
The hominin evolution of language: Behavioral changes
"Proto-World" language
The evolutionary process
Conclusion
16. Consciousness
Sensory awareness
Blindsight and deaf hearing
The role of reentry
Attention
Problems with attention as consciousness
Metacognition
Self-recognition
Individual differences in self-recognition
Self-recognizing species
The role of encephalization
The role of sociality
Theory of mind
Referential pointing
Helping and deception
Conclusion
17. A summary in nine firsts
The first vertebrate (520 million years ago)
The first tetrapod (365 million years ago)
The first eutherian (170 million years ago)
The first primate (74 million years ago)
The first ape (29 million years ago)
The first great ape (20 million years ago)
The first hominin (7.5 million years ago)
The first human (2.4 million years ago)
The first modern human (200,000 years ago)
The continuing story
Glossary
References
Additional picture credits
Author Index
Subject Index