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Brain Advance Access originally published online on December 2, 2008
Brain 2009 132(3):820-824; doi:10.1093/brain/awn290
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Book Review

The sapient paradox: can cognitive neuroscience solve it?

Merlin Donald

Queen's University
Ontario, Canada

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

What makes the human mind unique? One answer would be our particular kind of culture, which might be called ‘mindsharing’ culture. Human beings are not only able to detect the existence of other minds, and to understand that those minds have beliefs, but are also able to form networks of trust built around shared intentions and beliefs. No other species does anything like this.

Much current research in neuroscience is aimed at understanding the processes that contribute to our construction of culture. Recognizing the importance of integrating this work into their research, and of drawing neuroscientists into more collaboration, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge initiated a conference in September 2007, devoted to the theme ‘Archaeology meets neuroscience’. A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is now devoted to the proceedings of that pioneering meeting. Although understandably selective, this volume contains . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Material culture and distributed cognition

The underlying neurocognitive adaptations supporting human culture


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