Comparative Neuropsychology

This collection of essays take as their starting point the assumption that the human brain shares many of its most important functional systems with its primate relatives. The authors take a comparative evolutionary approach to understanding human cognition and brain function.

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Comparative Neuropsychology is a collection of state-of-the-art essays by some of the world's leading neuropsychologists. It is prepared as a tribute to the late George Ettlinger, one of the leading figures in comparative neuropsychology research over the last 40 years, and reflects current research in the many areas where Ettlinger made a particular contribution to our understanding. Taking as their starting point the assumption that the human brain shares many of its most important functional systems with its primate relatives, the authors take a comparative evolutionary approach to understanding human cognition and brain function. The book's fifteen chapters cover a wide range of subject areas, including memory, visual and somatosensory perception, motor control, attention, cross-modality integration, interhemispheric transmission, and behavioural intelligence. The final chapters of the book critically discuss questions basic to the comparative enterprise: whether we can in fact apply concepts derived from human cognitive psychology to primate neuropsychology, and whether there are evolutionary discontinuities in cortical brain structure among the higher primate species. One of the first and most comprehensive books to be written on the topic, Comparative Neuropsychology forms a fascinating and wide-ranging collection. It will be read by undergraduate and post-graduate students in psychology, neuroscience, and neuropsychology, as well as researchers in those areas.