From Ecology To Brain Development Bridging Separate Evolutionary Paradigms

The nervous system is the product of biological evolution and is shaped by the interplay between extrinsic factors determining the ecology of animals, and by intrinsic processes that dictate the developmental rules that give rise to adult functional structures. This special topic is oriented to develop an integrative view from behavior and ecology to neurodevelopmental processes. We address questions such as how do sensory systems evolve according to ecological conditions? How do neural networks organize to generate adaptive behavior? How does cognition and brain connectivity evolve? What are the developmental mechanisms that give rise to functional adaptation? Accordingly, the book is divided in three sections, (i) Evolution of sensorimotor systems; (ii) Cognitive computations and neural circuits, and (iii) Development and brain evolution. We hope that this initiative will support an interdisciplinary program that addresses the nervous system as a unified organ, subject to both functional and developmental constraints, where the final outcome results of a compromise between different parameters rather than being the result of several single variables acting independently of each other.

Synthesizing coverage of sensation and reward into a comprehensive systems overview, Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward presents a cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach to the interplay of sensory and reward processing in the brain. While over the past 70 years these areas have drifted apart, this book makes a case for reuniting sensation a

Essays on the contributions to historical and contemporary evolutionary theory of the Baldwin effect, which postulates the effects of learned behaviors on evolutionary change.

Merging evolutionary ecology and cognitive science, cognitive ecology investigates how animal interactions with natural habitats shape cognitive systems, and how constraints on nervous systems limit or bias animal behavior. Research in cognitive ecology has expanded rapidly in the past decade, and this second volume builds on the foundations laid out in the first, published in 1998. Cognitive Ecology II integrates numerous scientific disciplines to analyze the ecology and evolution of animal cognition. The contributors cover the mechanisms, ecology, and evolution of learning and memory, including detailed analyses of bee neurobiology, bird song, and spatial learning. They also explore decision making, with mechanistic analyses of reproductive behavior in voles, escape hatching by frog embryos, and predation in the auditory domain of bats and eared insects. Finally, they consider social cognition, focusing on alarm calls and the factors determining social learning strategies of corvids, fish, and mammals. With cognitive ecology ascending to its rightful place in behavioral and evolutionary research, this volume captures the promise that has been realized in the past decade and looks forward to new research prospects.

Using evidence from a broad array of scientific fields (including biology, psychology, and economics), this book provides cutting-edge information about the flexibility of genetic expression that derives from the interplay of genes with environments from

Good,No Highlights,No Markup,all pages are intact, Slight Shelfwear,may have the corners slightly dented, may have slight color changes/slightly damaged spine.

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution.

This is the only book which deals with the correlatory comparison between hierarchical living systems and inorganic physical ones. The culmination of the book is the proposition of research to discover and understand the natural underlying level of organization which produces the descriptive commonality of life and physics. Traditional science eliminates life from its purview by its rejection of interrelationships as a primary content of systems. The conventional procedure of science is that of reductionism, whereby complex systems are dismantled to characterize lower level components, but virtually no attention is given to how to rebuild those systems—the underlying assumption is that analysis and synthesis are symmetrical. This book fulfills two main coupled functions. Firstly, it details hierarchy as the major formulation of natural complex systems and investigates the fundamental character of natural hierarchy as a widely transferable ‘container’ of structure and/or function – and this in the case of the new development of a representational or model hierarchy. Secondly, it couples this hierarchical description to that of the electronic properties of semiconductors, as a well-modeled canonical example of physical properties. The central thesis is that these two descriptions are comparable, if care is taken to treat logical and epistemological aspects with prudence: a large part of the book is composed of just this aspect of care for grounding consistency. As such great attention is given to correct assessment of argumentative features which are otherwise presumed ‘known’ but which are usually left uncertain. Development of the ideas is always based on a relationship between entity or phenomenon and their associated ecosystems, and this applies equally well to the consequent derivations of consciousness and information.