Using Neuroimaging in Archaeology to investigate Cognitive Evolution

Summary

A big question in cognitive archaeology is whether complex tool-making and language co-evolved in the human lineage. There is considerable overlap in the brain structures that support complex body actions, including pantomiming and tool use, but also making music and using language. The activation of shared brain areas for separate skills is the basis of this popular theory. The aim of this talk is to review some of the difficulties - and possible solutions - to measuring the degree of overlap in neural activation patterns across tasks. Action means motion, but most neuroimaging methods (such as fMRI, which identifies areas in the brain where blood-flow is up-regulated during cognitive processing) require participants to lie still during the scans. We review recent results that correlate blood-flow signatures, obtained using functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound, to show how tasks that draw on common networks in the brain cause similar blood-flow patterns.

We discuss recent work on multivoxel pattern association that shows how specific mental states or representational content can be decoded from fMRI activity patterns to evaluate whether common tasks draw on common representations.

Our talk will give cognitive archaeologists guidance for making the best use of modern neuroimaging techniques.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Cognitive Archaeology

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