@howbrainsevolve profile picture
Robert Barton @howbrainsevolve

Evolutionary anthropologist interested in 'organs of extreme perfection and complication' (brains, mainly)

Joined November 2011
  • Tweets 6,018
  • Following 403
  • Followers 1,551
255 Photos and videos
Robert Barton retweeted
Shiry Ginosar@shiryginosar
Jun 8
Our @SimonsInstitute workshop on intelligence starts tomorrow (June 8)! We're bringing together researchers from AI, TOC, Psych, and Neuro to discuss two emerging themes: world models and social cognition. Join us in Berkeley or via livestream: simons.berkeley.edu/workshop…

Topics in Intelligence: World Models and Social Reasoning

This workshop is dedicated to collaborative, interdisciplinary fundamental research at the intersection of the theory of computation, artificial intelligence, psychology, and neuroscience. The...

simons.berkeley.edu
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My talk on embodied cognitive evolution as part of the workshop on 'Topics in Intelligence at The Simons institute UC Berkeley: youtube.com/watch?v=gH9uGxXf…

Embodied cognitive evolution

Robert Barton (University of Durham)https://simons.berkeley.edu/ta...

youtube.com
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Macroevolutionary brain scaling is a microevolutionary metaphenomenon - full text of our new paper now available (open access) nature.com/articles/s41467-0…

Macroevolutionary brain scaling is a microevolutionary metaphenomenon

Nature Communications - Recent work has demonstrated that the relationship between brain and body mass across mammals is curvilinear. Here, the authors demonstrate this curvilinearity across 4679...

nature.com
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This has implications for how we interpret macroevolutionary patterns more generally, emphasising the need to account for intraspecific variation in order to understand variation across species
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One implication is that measures of relative brain size should be treated with extreme caution. The curvilinear pattern may explain why large bodied species appear relatively small brained when using linear models to characterise and account for scaling - they are large not dim
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Robert Barton retweeted
Vittorio Gallese@GalleseVittorio
Jan 8
What the Best Neuroscientists Already Know "The claim that neuroscience needs the humanities is not a plea from outside the field. Many of its most thoughtful practitioners have already reached this conclusion." stevenmintz.substack.com/p/t…

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Yes! nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
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Robert Barton retweeted
Durham University@durham_uni
26 Aug 2025
A study co-authored by @howbrainsevolve of @AnthDurham1 gives new insight on how human hands and minds evolved together. 🧠The research is published in @CommsBio & was led by Dr Joanna Baker of @UniofReading 👉 brnw.ch/21wVcyc #DUresearch #DUinspire
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New paper: Human dexterity and brains evolved hand in hand nature.com/articles/s42003-0…

Human dexterity and brains evolved hand in hand

Communications Biology - Thumbs and brains coevolved in primates. Across living and extinct species, longer thumbs predict bigger brains, highlighting the neural cost of dexterity.

nature.com
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Pathway to Independence – an interview with Max Farnworth journals.biologists.com/dev/…

Pathway to Independence – an interview with Max Farnworth

Max Farnworth completed his PhD in Gregor Bucher's lab at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he explored how heterochrony shapes the evolution and development of insect brains. He then...

journals.biologists.com
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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 royalsocietypublishing.org/d…

Humans may not have a uniquely enhanced sequence memory: sequence discrimination is facilitated by...

Abstract. Humans have been suggested to possess uniquely enhanced memory for sequences, based on sequence discrimination learning (SDL) tasks involving arb

royalsocietypublishing.org
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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 nature.com/articles/s41467-0…

Functional development of the human cerebellum from birth to age five

Nature Communications - Using over 1,000 early childhood fMRI scans, the authors mapped cerebellocortical connectivity, revealing early integration with higher-order networks and age-related...

nature.com
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Robert Barton retweeted
Vittorio Gallese@GalleseVittorio
7 Jul 2025
Is the sense of reality a purely visual business?? "Our results demonstrate that a key mechanism through which the brain distinguishes imagination from reality is by monitoring the activity of the mid-level visual cortex." cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S08…

A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality

Dijkstra et al. show that our brain distinguishes imagination from reality by monitoring how strongly the fusiform gyrus is activated. When imagined and real images produce similar activity, people...

cell.com
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Robert Barton retweeted
Megan Petersdorf@meganpetersdorf
1 Jul 2025
Do you have field work experience? Do you want more? Our team wants YOU to manage our field site studying Kinda baboons in Kasanka National Park, Zambia! Start date is this August 2025 so apply ASAP! Job ad here: tinyurl.com/KindaBaboon
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'Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence' - paper by Louise Barrett and me just out: royalsocietypublishing.org/d…. .
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