1st Edition
The Twofold Brain Exploring Fundamental Questions about Brain Lateralization
Introduction
1. What is brain asymmetry and what is its function?
2. How common is brain asymmetry and when did it first evolve?
3. Is brain asymmetry an evolutionary stable strategy?
4. How does brain asymmetry develop?
5. Is personality linked to one or the other hemisphere and is getting stuck in one hemisphere linked to stress responses and depression?
6. Does brain asymmetry have implications for animal welfare?
7. Does one hemisphere age before the other?
8. Does brain asymmetry underlie mental number line?
9. Do the two halves of the brain have separate and independent consciousness?
Author Index
Subject Index
Biography
Lesley J. Rogers (BSc(Hons), D.Phil, DSc, FAA, FRSN) is Emeritus Professor at the University of New England. She discovered asymmetry of brain and behaviour in the chick and the importance of light exposure of the embryo in its development. She has conducted research on brain and behavioural lateralization on a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate species, including eye and hand preferences in primates (marmosets and orangutans). Her other areas of research are the neurobiology of learning and memory and neural changes during brain development. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
Giorgio Vallortigara is Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Animal Brain and Cognition Laboratory at the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento, Italy. His major research interest is the study of cognition in a comparative and evolutionary perspective, particularly the cerebral mechanisms underlying the use of geometry in spatial navigation and object and number representation in the animal brain. He has also studied the evolution of the asymmetry of the brain. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the recipient of several honours and prizes, including the Geoffrey de St. Hilaire Prize for Ethology and a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ruhr in Germany.
"A masterful synthesis of decades of research, this engaging and authoritative book reveals that brain lateralization is not uniquely human but a fundamental feature of nervous systems across the animal kingdom. Written by two leading experts in the field, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution and organization of the brain."
Prof. Andreas Nieder, author of Bird Brain and A Brain for Numbers; Professor of Animal Physiology, University of Tübingen
"This is a deeply rewarding dive into the fascinating realm of brain lateralization. Wide-ranging and insightful, almost every page vindicates the authors' claim that to truly understand cognition we need to approach it from the perspective of comparative neurobiology."
Tim Bayne, author of The Unity of Consciousness and Thought: A Very Short Introduction; Professor of Philosophy, Monash University
