My talk on embodied cognitive evolution as part of the workshop on 'Topics in Intelligence' at The Simons institute UC Berkeley: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH9u.... Many thanks to @shiryginosar.bsky.social and Gily Ginosar for organising

A small contribution to an important topic, in Nature Reviews Biodiversity. I highlight @howbrainsevolve.bsky.social and Harvey's work in 2000 and illustrate it's pivotal role in our understanding into the principles of brain evolution. Have a read - it's short! www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Macroevolutionary brain scaling is a microevolutionary metaphenomenon - full text of our new paper now available www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... @durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

Yes! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

@royalsociety.org MUST strip Musk of his fellowship to retain credibility. He has brought the society into disrepute in the gravest manner. Calling on all FRSs, please act swiftly

New paper: Human dexterity and brains evolved hand in hand www.nature.com/articles/s42...

A new study co-authored by @howbrainsevolve.bsky.social gives new insight into how human hands & minds evolved together. The research is published in Communications Biology & was led by Dr Joanna Baker of @uniofreading.bsky.social. Read more:👉 bit.ly/4myXT4c #DUresearch #DUinspire

Delighted to see this work out in PNAS. The idea that got me into butterflies, started on it in 2011 but took the intellectual energy of @benitoexplains.bsky.social, and the support of a great team, to develop it and put it all together. Thanks to #NERC @ukri.org for funding 🙏🏻

Humans may not have a uniquely specialised memory for sequences - it may be more to do with how tasks are culturally scaffolded and what they “mean” to participants. New paper

Interesting new study demonstrates "cerebellar connectivity to higher-order networks at birth, which generally strengthen with age, emphasizing the cerebellum’s early role in cognitive processing beyond sensory and motor functions" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Interesting new @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social study, bearing on the interpretation of GWAS results: 
“Common and rare genetic variants show network convergence for a majority of human traits” 🧪🧬 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds: our special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org Phil Trans B on the diverse evolutionary processes underlying cognitive evolution is out today. Thanks to all our contributors! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence - Louise Barrett and me on comparative psychology eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Trump on embodied cognition (via ChatGPT)

Quite happy to see the website we made for #Darwin’s 200th birthday is alive and well once more, and more extensive than i remembered! darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk

One week left to apply!

Interesting Science Advances study probing the genetics of human brain geometry (beyond volume), using data from @ukbiobank.bsky.social 🧪🧠🧬

Thrilled for the upcoming TIBBE online talks &discussions with the amazing @howbrainsevolve.bsky.social & Susan Healy around how do we better connect brain structure, function & behaviours? Next Wednesday, May 28, 2pm UTC, 4pm Paris 🧠🐒🦜Join us www.crowdcast.io/c/linking-br... @compcogsoc.bsky.social

“males invest more on locomotor control, flight stability and sky-compass navigation which may have evolved in response to sex-specific behaviours, like courtship display…females have larger mushroom bodies that strongly and positively covary with the optic lobes…” Lovely work!

I made this slide during his first presidency. It illustrates how not to make evolutionary inferences from comparative data (dashed red line, although that could also be stock markets). Today more than ever it seems like an insult to chimpanzees

This year marks 360 years since the first edition of #PhilosophicalTransactions, launching the world’s longest-running scientific journal. Join us as we take a 360° view of publishing, exploring its history, reflecting on its present impact, and imagining its future. royalsociety.org/journals/pub...