Primate Neuroethology - Tapa dura

"Platt and Ghazanfar have assembled what will undoubtedly become the standard text in primate neuroethology. This is a volume that should provides fresh insight for primatologists, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists as it reveals that rich interdisciplinary threads that bind these areas of scholarship together. This is a must-have book for anyone interested in primate cognition." --Paul Glimcher, Professor of Neural Science, Economics, and Psychology, New York University "Primate Neuroethology is magnificent! Michael Platt and Asif Ghazanfar have brought together the foremost experts in the fields of primate behaviour, cognition and neurobiology to create a comprehensive and accessible work in the emerging field of primate neuroethology. Weaving together the contributions of a remarkable group of scientists, they have bridged the gap between ethology and neurobiology in this authoritative-yet-provocative text." --Alan Kingstone, Distinguished University Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience, University of British Columbia "Overall, this is a comprehensive, diverse, well illustrated, and highly informative collection...without question the large amount of material and the successful approach to presenting the case for primate neuroethology make this volume the kind of resource one will return to repeatedly. So keep it centrally located on your bookshelf..." --PsycCRITIQUES

Why do people find monkeys and apes so compelling to watch? One clear answer is that they seem so similar to us―a window into our own minds and how we have evolved over millennia. As Charles Darwin wrote in his Notebook, "He who understands baboon would do more toward metaphysics than Locke." Darwin recognized that behavior and cognition, and the neural architecture that support them, evolved to solve specific social and ecological problems. Defining these problems for neurobiological study, and conveying neurobiological results to ethologists and psychologists, is fundamental to an evolutionary understanding of brain and behavior.

The goal of this book is to do just that. It collects, for the first time in a single book, information on primate behavior and cognition, neurobiology, and the emerging discipline of neuroethology. Here leading scientists in several fields review work ranging from primate foraging behavior to the neurophysiology of motor control, from vocal communication to the functions of the auditory cortex. The resulting synthesis of cognitive, ethological, and neurobiological approaches to primate behavior yields a richer understanding of our primate cousins that also sheds light on the evolutionary development of human behavior and cognition.