[Todos] Recordatorio: Charla Julia Fischer - Lunes 01/10 11.30AM

[Juan Kamienkowski]

Queriamos invitarlos a un seminario abierto del Laboratorio de
Neurociencia Integrativa. La invitada es Julia Fischer. actualmente es
Profesora del German Primate Center (Goettingen, Germany) y directora
del Cognitive Ethology Lab, el cual opera un campo de investigación de
babuinos en Senegal. Julia Fischer es experta en cognición y
comunicación animal, con un enfoque ecologico y evolutivo. Su interés
principal es el estudio de la evolución del lenguaje, en particular su
investigación se enfoca sobre el estudio de las vocalizaciones en
primates y la decodificación de la información que llevan y el
desarrollo de las capacidades cognitivas y comunicativas.

LUNES 01 / 10 a las 11:30hs en el AULA FEDERMAN, Primer Piso, Pabellón
1, Ciudad Universitaria, Buenos Aires.

"Nonhuman primate communication and the roots of human language"
Julia Fischer
(Cognitive Ethology Lab, German Primate Center, Goettingen, Germany;
http://www.cog-ethol.de/index.php )

I will explore the commonalities and differences in the vocal
communication of nonhuman primates and humans. Research in the last
decades has yielded strong evidence in favor of the assumption that
the acoustic structure of nonhuman primate vocalizations is largely
innate, with only limited plasticity. On the other hand, nonhuman
primates exhibit considerable flexibility in terms of the
comprehension of calls and the integration of information from
different sources. I will present a number of studies that addressed
the question of adaptation to the habitat, the importance of
phylogenetic relationships, and physiological effects on call
production. Further, I will present a recent model of the cognitive
mechanisms supporting flexible responses and decision making. In
addition, I will briefly discuss the issue of lateralized processing
of sounds, a hallmark in human speech perception. Taken together, the
findings suggest that evolutionary constraints played an important
role in the evolution of primate communication, while the ability to
learn and integrate information made up for some of the restrictions
in vocal production. Whether or not further studies of nonhuman
primate communication will indeed solve the puzzle of the origin of
speech remains an open issue.

--
Juan E Kamienkowski
Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa
Departamento de Fisica, FCEN-UBA
Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellon I
(1428) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Phone: (54-11) 4576 3300 (282)
Fax: (54-11) 4576 3357
http://www.neurociencia.df.uba.ar/