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(1 - 12 of 12)
- Title
- The cerebral cortex of Albert Einstein: a description and preliminary analysis of unpublished photographs.
- Creator
- Falk, Dean, Lepore, Fredrick, Noe, Adrianne
- Abstract/Description
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Upon his death in 1955, Albert Einstein's brain was removed, fixed and photographed from multiple angles. It was then sectioned into 240 blocks, and histological slides were prepared. At the time, a roadmap was drawn that illustrates the location within the brain of each block and its associated slides. Here we describe the external gross neuroanatomy of Einstein's entire cerebral cortex from 14 recently discovered photographs, most of which were taken from unconventional angles. Two of the...
Show moreUpon his death in 1955, Albert Einstein's brain was removed, fixed and photographed from multiple angles. It was then sectioned into 240 blocks, and histological slides were prepared. At the time, a roadmap was drawn that illustrates the location within the brain of each block and its associated slides. Here we describe the external gross neuroanatomy of Einstein's entire cerebral cortex from 14 recently discovered photographs, most of which were taken from unconventional angles. Two of the photographs reveal sulcal patterns of the medial surfaces of the hemispheres, and another shows the neuroanatomy of the right (exposed) insula. Most of Einstein's sulci are identified, and sulcal patterns in various parts of the brain are compared with those of 85 human brains that have been described in the literature. To the extent currently possible, unusual features of Einstein's brain are tentatively interpreted in light of what is known about the evolution of higher cognitive processes in humans. As an aid to future investigators, these (and other) features are correlated with blocks on the roadmap (and therefore histological slides). Einstein's brain has an extraordinary prefrontal cortex, which may have contributed to the neurological substrates for some of his remarkable cognitive abilities. The primary somatosensory and motor cortices near the regions that typically represent face and tongue are greatly expanded in the left hemisphere. Einstein's parietal lobes are also unusual and may have provided some of the neurological underpinnings for his visuospatial and mathematical skills, as others have hypothesized. Einstein's brain has typical frontal and occipital shape asymmetries (petalias) and grossly asymmetrical inferior and superior parietal lobules. Contrary to the literature, Einstein's brain is not spherical, does not lack parietal opercula and has non-confluent Sylvian and inferior postcentral sulci.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- FSU_migr_anthro_faculty_publications-0001, 10.1093/brain/aws295
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- A Critical Evaluation of the Down Syndrome Diagnosis for LB1, Type Specimen of Homo floresiensis.
- Creator
- Baab, Karen L., Brown, Peter, Falk, Dean, Richtsmeier, Joan T., Hildebolt, Charles F., Smith, Kirk, Jungers, William
- Abstract/Description
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The Liang Bua hominins from Flores, Indonesia, have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate since their initial description and classification in 2004. These remains have been assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis, with the partial skeleton LB1 as the type specimen. The Liang Bua hominins are notable for their short stature, small endocranial volume, and many features that appear phylogenetically primitive relative to modern humans, despite their late Pleistocene age. Recently,...
Show moreThe Liang Bua hominins from Flores, Indonesia, have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate since their initial description and classification in 2004. These remains have been assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis, with the partial skeleton LB1 as the type specimen. The Liang Bua hominins are notable for their short stature, small endocranial volume, and many features that appear phylogenetically primitive relative to modern humans, despite their late Pleistocene age. Recently, some workers suggested that the remains represent members of a small-bodied island population of modern Austro-Melanesian humans, with LB1 exhibiting clinical signs of Down syndrome. Many classic Down syndrome signs are soft tissue features that could not be assessed in skeletal remains. Moreover, a definitive diagnosis of Down syndrome can only be made by genetic analysis as the phenotypes associated with Down syndrome are variable. Most features that contribute to the Down syndrome phenotype are not restricted to Down syndrome but are seen in other chromosomal disorders and in the general population. Nevertheless, we re-evaluated the presence of those phenotypic features used to support this classification by comparing LB1 to samples of modern humans diagnosed with Down syndrome and euploid modern humans using comparative morphometric analyses. We present new data regarding neurocranial, brain, and symphyseal shape in Down syndrome, additional estimates of stature for LB1, and analyses of inter- and intralimb proportions. The presence of cranial sinuses is addressed using CT images of LB1. We found minimal congruence between the LB1 phenotype and clinical descriptions of Down syndrome. We present important differences between the phenotypes of LB1 and individuals with Down syndrome, and quantitative data that characterize LB1 as an outlier compared with Down syndrome and non-Down syndrome groups. Homo floresiensis remains a phenotypically unique, valid species with its roots in Plio-Pleistocene Homo taxa.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016-06-08
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_wos_000377561700008, 10.1371/journal.pone.0155731
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Ethnozoology of the Maya: An Analysis of Fauna from Five Sites in the Peten, Guatemala.
- Creator
- Pohl, Mary
- Date Issued
- 1976-12-01
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1474471277
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Evolution of Brain and Culture: The Neurological and Cognitive Journey from Australopithecus to Albert Einstein.
- Creator
- Falk, Dean
- Abstract/Description
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Fossil and comparative primatological evidence suggest that alterations in the development of prehistoric hominin infants kindled three consecutive evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) trends that, ultimately, paved the way for the evolution of the human brain and cognition. In the earliest trend, infants' development of posture and locomotion became delayed because of anatomical changes that accompanied the prolonged evolution of bipedalism. Because modern humans have inherited these...
Show moreFossil and comparative primatological evidence suggest that alterations in the development of prehistoric hominin infants kindled three consecutive evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) trends that, ultimately, paved the way for the evolution of the human brain and cognition. In the earliest trend, infants' development of posture and locomotion became delayed because of anatomical changes that accompanied the prolonged evolution of bipedalism. Because modern humans have inherited these changes, our babies are much slower than other primates to reach developmental milestones such as standing, crawling, and walking. The delay in ancestral babies' physical development eventually precipitated an evolutionary reversal in which they became increasing unable to cling independently to their mothers. For the first time in prehistory, babies were, thus, periodically deprived of direct physical contact with their mothers. This prompted the emergence of a second evo-devo trend in which infants sought contact comfort from caregivers using evolved signals, including new ways of crying that are conserved in modern babies. Such signaling stimulated intense reciprocal interactions between prehistoric mothers and infants that seeded the eventual emergence of motherese and, subsequently, protolanguage. The third trend was for an extreme acceleration in brain growth that began prior to the last trimester of gestation and continued through infants' first postnatal year (early "brain spurt"). Conservation of this trend in modern babies explains why human brains reach adult sizes that are over three times those of chimpanzees. The fossil record of hominin cranial capacities together with comparative neuroanatomical data suggest that, around 3 million years ago, early brain spurts began to facilitate an evolutionary trajectory for increasingly large adult brains in association with neurological reorganization. The prehistoric increase in brain size eventually caused parturition to become exceedingly difficult, and this difficulty, known as the "obstetrical dilemma", is likely to constrain the future evolution of brain size and, thus, privilege ongoing evolution in neurological reorganization. In modern babies, the brain spurt is accompanied by formation and tuning (pruning) of neurological connections, and development of dynamic higher-order networks that facilitate acquisition of grammatical language and, later in development, other advanced computational abilities such as musical or mathematical perception and performance. The cumulative evidence suggests that the emergence and refinement of grammatical language was a prime mover of hominin brain evolution.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016-02-16
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1456937444, 10.4436/jass.94027
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Foodways Archaeology: A Decade of Research from the Southeastern United States.
- Creator
- Peres, Tanya M.
- Abstract/Description
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Interest in the study of foodways through an archaeological lens, particularly in the American Southeast, is evident in the abundance of literature on this topic over the past decade. Foodways as a concept includes all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, and consumption of food. We study foodways and components of foodways archaeologically through direct and indirect evidence. The current synthesis is concerned with...
Show moreInterest in the study of foodways through an archaeological lens, particularly in the American Southeast, is evident in the abundance of literature on this topic over the past decade. Foodways as a concept includes all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, and consumption of food. We study foodways and components of foodways archaeologically through direct and indirect evidence. The current synthesis is concerned with research themes in the archaeology of Southeastern foodways, including feasting, gender, social and political status, and food insecurity. In this review, I explore the information that can be learned from material remains of the foodstuffs themselves and the multiple lines of evidence that can help us better understand the meanings, rituals, processes, and cultural meanings and motivations of foodways
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017-02-15
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1484910794, 10.1007/s10814-017-9104-4
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Interpreting Sulci on Hominin Endocasts: Old Hypotheses and New Findings.
- Creator
- Falk, Dean
- Abstract/Description
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Paleoneurologists analyze internal casts (endocasts) of fossilized brain cases, which provide information about the size, shape and, to a limited degree, sulcal patterns reproduced from impressions left by the surface of the brain. When interpreted in light of comparative data from the brains of living apes and humans, sulcal patterns reproduced on hominin endocasts provide important information for studying the evolution of the cerebral cortex and cognition in human ancestors. Here, new...
Show morePaleoneurologists analyze internal casts (endocasts) of fossilized brain cases, which provide information about the size, shape and, to a limited degree, sulcal patterns reproduced from impressions left by the surface of the brain. When interpreted in light of comparative data from the brains of living apes and humans, sulcal patterns reproduced on hominin endocasts provide important information for studying the evolution of the cerebral cortex and cognition in human ancestors. Here, new evidence is discussed for the evolution of sulcal patterns associated with cortical reorganization in threeparts of the hominin brain: (1) the parietotemporo-occipital association cortex (2) Broca’s speech area, and (3) dorsolateral prefrontal association cortex. Of the three regions, the evidence regarding the last is the clearest. Compared to great apes, Australopithecus endocasts reproduce a clear middle frontal sulcus in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that is derived toward the human condition. This finding is consistent with data from comparative cytoarchitectural studies of ape and human brains as well as shape analyses of australopithecie endocasts. The comparative and direct evidence for all three regions suggests that hominin brain reorganization was under way by at least the time of Australopitecusafricanus (∼2.5to3.0mya), despite the ape-sized brains of these hominins, and that it entailed expansion of both rostral and caudal association cortices.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014-05-01
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1456937107, 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00134
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Pests in the Garden: Testing the Garden-Hunting Model at the Rutherford-Kizer Site, Sumner County, Tennessee.
- Creator
- Clinton, Jennifer M., Peres, Tanya M.
- Abstract/Description
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Garden hunting as a prehistoric subsistence strategy has been studied in the American Tropics and the American Southwest, and as a modern strategy in the Peruvian Amazon. The concept of garden hunting is centered on the idea that as human groups focus more time on agriculture-related activities, they have less time to spend on hunting. This case study is the first time the garden-hunting model has been tested with data from the Mississippian period in the South-eastern United States. We build...
Show moreGarden hunting as a prehistoric subsistence strategy has been studied in the American Tropics and the American Southwest, and as a modern strategy in the Peruvian Amazon. The concept of garden hunting is centered on the idea that as human groups focus more time on agriculture-related activities, they have less time to spend on hunting. This case study is the first time the garden-hunting model has been tested with data from the Mississippian period in the South-eastern United States. We build on previously published primary zooarchaeological data from the Rutherford-Kizer site, located in Middle Tennessee, to test the garden-hunting model of animal exploitation. Our analysis indicates the Rutherford-Kizer site residents practiced a selective hunting strategy that targeted terrestrial animals that thrive in disturbed habitats, such as cultivated fields.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1847
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Pre-Clovis occupation 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, Florida, and the peopling of the Americas.
- Creator
- Halligan, Jessi J., Waters, Michael R., Perrotti, Angelina, Owens, Ivy J., Feinberg, Joshua M., Bourne, Mark D., Fenerty, Brendan, Winsborough, Barbara, Carlson, David, Fisher, Daniel C., Stafford, Thomas W., Dunbar, James S.
- Abstract/Description
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Stone tools and mastodon bones occur in an undisturbed geological context at the Page-Ladson site, Florida. Seventy-one radiocarbon ages show that similar to 14,550 calendar years ago (cal yr B.P.), people butchered or scavenged amastodon next to a pond in a bedrock sinkhole within the Aucilla River. This occupation surface was buried by similar to 4 m of sediment during the late Pleistocenemarine transgression, which also left the site submerged. Sporormiella and other proxy evidence from...
Show moreStone tools and mastodon bones occur in an undisturbed geological context at the Page-Ladson site, Florida. Seventy-one radiocarbon ages show that similar to 14,550 calendar years ago (cal yr B.P.), people butchered or scavenged amastodon next to a pond in a bedrock sinkhole within the Aucilla River. This occupation surface was buried by similar to 4 m of sediment during the late Pleistocenemarine transgression, which also left the site submerged. Sporormiella and other proxy evidence from the sediments indicate that hunter-gatherers along the Gulf Coastal Plain coexisted with and utilized megafauna for similar to 2000 years before these animals became extinct at similar to 12,600 cal yr B. P. Page-Ladson expands our understanding of the earliest colonizers of the Americas and human-megafauna interaction before extinction.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016-05
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_wos_000380073000040, 10.1126/sciadv.1600375
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Recent Research in the Middle Cumberland River Valley: Introduction to a Special Volume.
- Creator
- Deter-Wolf, Aaron, Peres, Tanya M
- Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1453748062
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- The Shell-Bearing Archaic in the Middle Cumberland River Valley.
- Creator
- Peres, Tanya M., Deter-Wolf, Aaron
- Abstract/Description
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The Middle Cumberland River Valley of Tennessee comprises a unique regional environment that has continually supported human occupation along the natural river levees and adjacent terrace landforms since the Late Pleistocene. Over thousands of years Archaic period inhabitants of the Middle Cumberland River Valley harvested the invertebrate species that populated the streams and waterways of the region, using them for subsistence and raw materials and taking an active role in managing the...
Show moreThe Middle Cumberland River Valley of Tennessee comprises a unique regional environment that has continually supported human occupation along the natural river levees and adjacent terrace landforms since the Late Pleistocene. Over thousands of years Archaic period inhabitants of the Middle Cumberland River Valley harvested the invertebrate species that populated the streams and waterways of the region, using them for subsistence and raw materials and taking an active role in managing the riverine resources. The cumulative result of this process appears in the archaeological record as abundant and often-dense deposits of invertebrate zooarchaeological remains. However, few formal archaeological investigations have been conducted on Archaic shell-bearing sites in the region. In this field report we present initial results of site file analysis, radiocarbon dating, and species composition research in order to introduce the Middle Cumberland River Valley manifestation of the cultural phase traditionally known as the Shell Mound Archaic.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016-06-13
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1467372254, 10.1080/0734578X.2016.1154428
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Multicomponent Shell-Bearing Site in Davidson County, Tennessee.
- Creator
- Peres, Tanya M., Deter-Wolf, Aaron, Myers, Gage A.
- Abstract/Description
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Site 40DV7 is one of several large shell-bearing sites located along the Cumberland River near Nashville which were heavily impacted by catastrophic flooding and looting activity during the spring of 2010. Emergency sampling and ongoing monitoring at 40DV7 since that time have identified deeply-stratified deposits spanning the Archaic through Mississippian periods. These deposits, and particularly the temporally-distinct shell midden components, may help inform our understanding of human...
Show moreSite 40DV7 is one of several large shell-bearing sites located along the Cumberland River near Nashville which were heavily impacted by catastrophic flooding and looting activity during the spring of 2010. Emergency sampling and ongoing monitoring at 40DV7 since that time have identified deeply-stratified deposits spanning the Archaic through Mississippian periods. These deposits, and particularly the temporally-distinct shell midden components, may help inform our understanding of human occupation, species interdependence, and environmental change along the Cumberland River over a period of more than 5000 years.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1453747339
- Format
- Citation
- Title
- Zooarchaeological Remains from the 1998 Fewkes Site Excavations, Williamson County, Tennessee.
- Creator
- Peres, Tanya M.
- Abstract/Description
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The Fewkes site faunal assemblage, excavated as part of a Phase III data recovery project for the Tennessee Department of Transportation in 1998, was analyzed and evaluated in light of its potential to provide significant information about Middle Mississippian subsistence practices and environmental conditions of the area during the time of occupation. Specific goals of the analysis included: (1) defining the subsistence strategies and practices of the people that inhabited the site; (2)...
Show moreThe Fewkes site faunal assemblage, excavated as part of a Phase III data recovery project for the Tennessee Department of Transportation in 1998, was analyzed and evaluated in light of its potential to provide significant information about Middle Mississippian subsistence practices and environmental conditions of the area during the time of occupation. Specific goals of the analysis included: (1) defining the subsistence strategies and practices of the people that inhabited the site; (2) determining the relationship of the site to the surrounding ecological habitats; and (3) determining the seasonality of the site. Additionally, the Fewkes faunal assemblage was compared to animal exploitation practices as outlined for the Cumberland River drainage model of Mississippian period sites. The results of the analysis of selected contexts are presented here.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- Identifier
- FSU_libsubv1_scholarship_submission_1453748255
- Format
- Citation
