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Cognitive Archaeology, Body Cognition, and the Evolution of Visuospatial Perception

  • 1st Edition - June 9, 2023
  • Latest edition
  • Editor: Emiliano Bruner
  • Language: English

Cognitive Archaeology, Body Cognition, and the Evolution of Visuospatial Perception offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive perspective on the evolution of the visuospat… Read more

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Description

Cognitive Archaeology, Body Cognition, and the Evolution of Visuospatial Perception offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive perspective on the evolution of the visuospatial ability in the human genus. It presents current topics in cognitive sciences and prehistoric archaeology, to provide a bridge between evolutionary anthropology and neurobiology.

This book explores how body perception and spatial sensing may have evolved in humans, as to enhance a “prosthetic capacity” able to integrate the brain, body, and technological elements into a single functional system. It includes chapters on touch and haptics, peripersonal space, parietal lobe evolution, somatosensory integration, neuroarchaeology, visual behavior, attention, and psychometrics.

Cognitive Archaeology, Body Cognition, and the Evolution of Visuospatial Perception represents an essential resource for evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and neuroscientists who are interested in the role of body perception and spatial ability in human cognition.

Key features

  • Addresses the role of body perception and sensing in human evolution
  • Supplies a comprehensive overview on the cognitive mechanisms associated with the integration between brain, body and tools
  • Offers a bridge between evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, and cognitive sciences

Readership

Researchers in human evolution and anthropology
Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in evolutionary biology, anthropology, and cognitive archaeology disciplines; researchers in psychology and neurobiology

Table of contents

Section I: Visuospatial cognition and evolution

  1. Somatosensation and body perception: the integration of afferent signals in multisensory cognitive processes

  2. Perception by effortful touch and a lawful approach to (the evolution of) perceiving and acting

  3. Evolutionary perspective on peripersonal space and perception

  4. The body in the world: tools and somato-centric maps in the primate brain

  5. Parietal cortex and cumulative technological culture

  6. Body-tool integration: past, present, and future

    7. Section II: Visuospatial behavior and cognitive archaeology

  7. The evolution of the parietal lobes in the genus Homo: the fossil evidence

  8. Parietal Lobe Expansion, its Consequences for Working Memory, and the Evolution of Modern Thinking

  9. Experimental neuroarchaeology of visuospatial behavior

  10. Cognitive archaeology, attention and visual behaviour

  11. Handling prehistory: tools, electrophysiology and haptics

  12. A comparative approach to evaluating the biomechanical complexity of the freehand knapping swing

  13. Psychometrics, visuospatial capacity and cognitive archaeology

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: June 9, 2023
  • Language: English

About the editor

EB

Emiliano Bruner

Emiliano Bruner has a Ph.D. in Animal Biology. Since 2007, he is the Research Group Leader in Hominid Paleoneurobiology at the National Research Center for Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. He works in brain evolution, bridging anthropology and neuroscience. His research over the last 20 years has largely dealt with the evolution of the parietal lobes in the human genus, with visuospatial cognition, and with the relationships between brain, body, and environment. He has published more than 150 scholarly articles, writes in several dissemination magazines, and is the editor of two books on paleoneurology.
Affiliations and expertise
Research Group Leader in Hominid Paleoneurobiology, National Research Center for Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain; Adjunct Professor, Center for Cognitive Archaeology, University of Colorado, USA

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