In this thesis, supervised by the CENIEH researchers Emiliano Bruner and José Mª Bermúdez de Castro, the influence of objects on the cognitive abilities of our ancestors is studied.
Today, Annapaola Fedato passed the viva voce for her doctoral thesis on visuospatial integration and cognitive archaeology, supervised by Emiliano Bruner and José Mª Bermúdez de Castro, researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH).
In recent years, the cognitive sciences are opting for theories which interpret technology as part of the mental process rather than just as a product of the brain. In fact, the regions of the cerebral cortex involved in brain-body-object integration are particularly well-developed in the primates, and above all in humans. This thesis looks at how objects might have influenced the cognitive abilities of our ancestors, and it sheds light on one of the fundamental aspects of the human being: technology.
The jury, chaired by Javier Baena Presyler (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and also made up of Marcos Terradillos Bernal (Universidad Internacional Isabel I de Castilla), Marina Mosquera Martínez (Universitat Rovira i Virgili e IPHES) and Natalie Uomini (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History), awarded the new Universidad de Burgos doctor the mark of 'cum laude'.
