China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
ENTRIES A–Z
Published in Philip Winn, Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
Note well that there are some difficulties with terminology: CEPHALIZATION is used to indicate the degree to which an animal has developed a head, with specialized sensory receptors, feeding organs and, perhaps most importantly, a concentration of neural tissue (either a head ganglion or a brain). The term ENCEPHALIZATION has been used in three ways. (i) It is a simple index of the degree to which the CEREBRAL CORTEX has developed. (ii) Encephalization has been used to describe the degree to which more recently evolved tissue—the cerebral cortex and particularly the NEOCORTEX—has taken over functions that were previously regulated by structures further down the NEURAXIS. It remains uncertain to what degree functions are 'taken over' as opposed to 'made more sophisticated' (that is, do older and newer structures combine with each other or do newer structures comprehensively take over the functions of older ones?). (iii) The word encephalization features in the ENCEPHALIZATION QUOTIENT (EQ) which is the ratio of log brain mass to log body mass. The encephalization quotient assumes that animals that are in some sense more intelligent (see INTELLIGENCE) have brains that are relatively larger in proportion to their body size compared to rather less intelligent animals. It is a measure that was introduced in the 1970s by H.J.Jerison, and was initially used in assessment of the likely intelligence of extinct animals, principally, of course, dinosaurs (see PALAEONEUROLOGY; DINOSAUR BEHAVIOR). It is a relatively crude measure: later authors interested in determining the relative intelligence of different species have taken measures such as a NEOCORTEX RATIO, the ratio of neocortical mass to the total brain mass. Similar measures could be taken for any identifiable brain structure.
Landmarks in the development of human communication
Published in Hearing, Balance and Communication, 2021
Giovanni Ruoppolo, Maria Nicastri
But what are the evolutionary modifications that have allowed the development of language and therefore such effective communication as to favour symbolic abstraction and the birth of culture? Among the most important we mention [4]:bipedalism, which has allowed man to free his hands from locomotor functions, dedicating them to technical functions, such as the construction of increasingly refined tools, and to communicative functions,the increase in the encephalization quotient, with a relative volume increase of the neocortical surface,the increase in social interactions due to even closer cooperation, an element already presents in anthropomorphic monkeys,the angulation of the skull base (Figure 1), resulting from the upright posture, which caused a downward displacement of the larynx with the enlargement of the resonance cavities which allowed the articulation of a very high number of vowel phonemes and greater mobility of the tongue and jaw, with the possibility of articulating a much greater number of consonant phonemes.