Where Evolutionary Psychology Meets Cognitive Neuroscience: A Précis to Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience

Abstract

Cognitive neuroscience, the study of brain-behavior relationships, has long attempted to map the brain. The discipline is flourishing, with an increasing number of functional neuroimaging studies appearing in the scientific literature daily. Unlike biology and even psychology, the cognitive neurosciences have only recently begun to apply evolutionary meta-theory and methodological guidance.Approaching cognitive neuroscience from an evolutionary perspective allows scientists to apply biologically based theoretical guidance to their investigations and can be conducted in both humans and nonhuman animals. In fact, several investigations of this sort are underway in laboratories around the world. This paper and two new volumes (Platek, Keenan, and Shackelford [Eds.], 2007; Platek and Shackelford [Eds.], under contract) represent the first formal attempts to document the burgeoning field of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience. Here, we briefly review the current state of the science of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, the methods available to the evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist, and what we foresee as the future directions of the discipline.

Evolutionary neuromarketing: darwinizing the neuroimaging paradigm for consumer behavior

“…Whereas cognitive neuroscience concerns itself with the biological mechanisms substratal to information processing and perception, evolutionary cognitive neuroscience seeks to more specifically identify how evolution has shaped such brain-behavior relationships (Krill et al, 2007;Platek, 2007;Platek et al, 2007). The successful application of evolutionary principles to the flourishing field of cognitive neuroscience allows for a multitude of studies, including research on humans and/or animals, to be guided by the same overarching rigorous, experiment-tested and theoretical framework (for a review see Platek et al, 2007).…”

Proximate and Ultimate Factors in Evolutionary Thinking on Art

“…Researching ultimate and proximate factors involved in art's evolution therefore requires not only identifying which 'traditional' proximate mechanisms may have been at work, such as neurocognitive features and their relationship with evolutionary insights (e.g. Krill et al, 2007), but also whether the same is perhaps true for art's assumed ultimate functions. The emphasis on original adaptive functions in current evolutionary hypotheses of art may be partially due to a corresponding focus on the same matter in larger-scale frameworks, such as evolutionary psychology, that are prevalent in research on art (e.g.…”

Is the social brain theory applicable to human individual differences? Relationship between Sociability personality dimension and brain size

“…This question is highly relevant according to the framework of Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience (Krill et al, 2007). We intended to test in our study whether the social brain theory can be extended to the field of individual differences.…”