EVENTS

STOQ 2009 – THE STOQ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
«BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. Facts and Theories»

Abstracts of the Lectures:

Robin Dunbar, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

The Evolution of Primate Sociality: Brains, Cognition and Behaviour

Primates have unusually large brains for body size. The general explanation (the social brain hypothesis) argues that this is because primates live in unusually complex societies, and therefore require more computational power to handle this complexity. I will review the evidence for the social brain hypothesis. I will then use these findings to explore the evolution of sociality in humans, and show how humans fit perfectly within the primate relationship between social group size and brain size. I will consider the cognitive demands that underpin these relationships (conventionally referred to as social cognition), and report recent neuroimaging experiments that explain why this kind of social cognition that underpins primate sociality is so neurologically demanding.