What were they thinking? Using electroencephalogram (EEG) to map brain activations during stone tool manufacture.

Summary

While psychologists have been using many different methods to map brain activity during various tasks, archaeologists have yet to fully utilize the potential of these techniques to examine early human cognition. Paleolithic stone tools provide a promising line of evidence in human behavioral and cognitive evolution. Recently, brain imaging modalities such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have been used to more directly link cognition and stone tools. This paper will review these previous studies and propose a new protocol. In contrast to earlier research, which have used hemodynamic brain activity mapping techniques (fMRI, PET, and fTCD); the research proposed here will be conducted through electromagnetic imaging with electroencephalogram (EEG) to examine the parallels of cognitive development with lithic industry advancements. Through the use of the EEG, a modality with better temporal control, we might isolate where in the lithic reduction process previously noted cognitive differences occur as well as provide a naturalistic knapping environment during the brain imaging.

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)

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