Emiliano Bruner
Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, Burgos
(Spain)
Centro de Investigación en Enfermedades Neurológicas, Madrid (Spain)
Email: emiliano.bruner@cenieh.es
Website : www.paleoneurology.wordpress.com
Title
Prehistory and Neuroscience
Abstract
Evolutionary anthropology must rely on both
paleontological and neontological evidence as to provide a reliable comparative
framework to test hypotheses and theories. This requirement is even more
stringent when dealing with brain and cognitive evolution, because of the
noticeable difficulties when investigating anatomical and behavioural aspects
in extinct species. Paleoneurology is the study of brain anatomy in fossil
taxa. It largely deals with the functional and structural relationships between
skull and brain in ontogeny and phylogeny, relying on digital anatomy, computed
morphometrics and numerical modelling to perform intra- and inter-specific
morphological comparisons. Neuroarchaeology, instead, investigates brain
functions associated with behaviours inferred from the archaeological record.
Finally, cognitive archaeology concerns the study of those same behaviours
according to current psychological models. Namely, these three fields deal with
brain anatomy, brain functions, and the cognitive process, respectively. A
proper integration between these three perspectives is necessary to provide a
consistent comparative background when making inference on brain evolution in
fossil hominids.
Biosketch
Emiliano Bruner is PhD in Animal Biology for the University La Sapienza, Rome (Italy). Since 2007, he is Research Group Leader in Hominid Paleoneurobiology at the National Research Center for Human Evolution, Burgos (Spain). He has published more than 150 scientific papers, and his main research areas deal with human evolution, brain evolution, paleoneurology, comparative neuroanatomy, and cognitive archaeology. He employs a wide array of methods and techniques that includes geometric morphometrics, multivariate statistics, digital imaging, network analysis, electrodermal analysis, psychometrics and eye-tracking. His research is particularly focused on the evolution of the parietal lobes, and on the evolution of visuospatial integration, body perception, and attention. He is involved in science dissemination, writing for several Spanish magazines and blogs.