Richard W. Byrne – författare

According to conventional wisdom, our unique human intellect results from evolutionary pressures for skilled tool use and for communication to enhance co-operation. This book explores a quite different idea: that the driving force was social expertise, allowing subtle manipulation of others within the social group. The need to outwit one's clever colleagues then produces an evolutionary spiralling of `Machiavellian intelligence'. This book forms a complete and self-contained text on this topic, including the origins of the idea, a wealth of exciting applications in anthropology, psychology, and zoology, and a current evaluation of more traditional ideas --to what extent is Machiavellian intelligence complementary or alternative to them? With contributions by an international team of authors, the reader is brought to the frontiers of scientific work on the origin of human intellect.

'Insight' is not a very popular word in psychology or biology. Popular terms-like "intelligence", "planning", "complexity" or "cognitive"- have a habit of sprawling out to include everyone's favourite interpretation, and end up with such vague meanings that each new writer has to redefine them for use. Insight remains in everyday usage: as a down-to-earth, lay term for a deep, shrewd or discerning kind of understanding. Insight is a good thing to have, so it's important to find out how it evolved, and that's what this book is about. Coming 20 years after publication of Richard Byrne's seminal book The Thinking Ape, Evolving Insight develops a new theory of the evolutionary origins of human abilities to understand the world of objects and other people. Defining mental representation and computation as 'insight', it reviews the evidence for insight in the cognition of animals. The book proposes that the understanding of causality and intentionality evolved twice in human ancestry: the "pretty good" understanding given by behaviour parsing, shared with other apes and related to cerebellar expansion; and the deeper understanding which requires language to model and is unique to humans. However, Ape-type insight may underlie non-verbal tests of intentionality and causal understanding, and much everyday human action. Accessible to those with little background in the topic, Evolving Insight is an important new work for anyone with an interest in psychology and the biological sciences.

How can the intelligence of monkeys and apes, and the huge brain expansion which marked human evolution be explained? In 1988, Machiavellian Intelligence was the first book to assemble the early evidence suggesting a new answer: that the evolution of intellect was primarily driven by selection for manipulative, social expertise within groups where the most challenging problem faced by individuals was dealing with their companions. Since then a wealth of new information and ideas has accumulated. This new book will bring readers up to date with the most important developments, extending the scope of the original ideas and evaluating them empirically from different perspectives. It is essential reading for reseachers and students in many different branches of evolution and behavioural sciences, primatology, and philosophy.

How can the intelligence of monkeys and apes, and the huge brain expansion which marked human evolution be explained? In 1988, Machiavellian Intelligence was the first book to assemble the early evidence suggesting a new answer: that the evolution of intellect was primarily driven by selection for manipulative, social expertise within groups where the most challenging problem faced by individuals was dealing with their companions. Since then a wealth of new information and ideas has accumulated. This new book will bring readers up to date with the most important developments, extending the scope of the original ideas and evaluating them empirically from different perspectives. It is essential reading for reseachers and students in many different branches of evolution and behavioural sciences, primatology, and philosophy.

This book provides up-to-date, practical information on functional mapping in order to assist neurosurgeons responsible for safely removing lesions in and around eloquent cortex – one of the greatest challenges in neurosurgery.  The roles of pre- and intraoperative mapping techniques are clearly explained, highlighting the advantages and limitations of each tool available to the neurosurgeon. The inclusion of treatment algorithms for applications in specific clinical circumstances ensures that the book will serve as a clear guide to this most complex of neurosurgical problems. To further assist the reader, instructive clinical case examples, accompanied by intraoperative photos and other illustrative material, help to explain the applications of functional mapping of eloquent cortex in different pathologies. Practitioners will find the book to be a ready guide to navigation of the practical decisions commonly faced when operating in eloquent cortex.