Overview

When did the first vertebrates emerge, and how did they differ from their invertebrate ancestors? When did vertebrates evolve jaws, paired fins, pattern vision, or a neocortex? How have evolutionary innovations such as these impacted vertebrate behavior and success? Georg Striedter and Glenn Northcutt answer these fundamental questions about all major vertebrate lineages. Highlighting the key innovations of each major taxonomic group, they review how evolutionary changes in vertebrate genetics, anatomy, and physiology are reflected in the nervous system. This highly accessible book allows readers to explore a vast expanse of scientific knowledge, ranging from paleoecology to comparative molecular biology, sensory biology to neural circuit evolution, and fossil anatomy to animal behavior. Brains Through Time examines how vertebrate nervous systems evolved in conjunction with other organ systems and the planet's ecology. Surveying an enormous range of information on genes and proteins, sensory and motor systems, central neural circuits, physiology, and animal behavior, the authors reconstruct the major changes that occurred as vertebrates emerged and then diversified. In the process, readers are transported back in time to key stages of vertebrate evolution, notably the origin of vertebrates, the evolution of paired fins and jaws, the transition to life on land, and the origins of warm-blooded mammals and birds.

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9780195125689

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This volume is highly recommended for undergraduate majors and graduate students in the biological sciences, as well as for evolutionary and cognitive neuroscientists. * Paul Tibbetts, Philosophy & Cognitive Science, University of Dayton, The Quarterly Review of Biology *

This volume is highly recommended for undergraduate majors and graduate students in the biological sciences, as well as for evolutionary and cognitive neuroscientists. * Paul Tibbetts, Philosophy & Cognitive Science, University of Dayton, The Quarterly Review of Biology * ...what most impressed me was the depth and comprehensive coverage of the historical and current literature on the origins, paleoecology, morphology, endothermy, physiology, and comparative neural and functional anatomy of basal chordates to crown vertebrates. Given this range of detailed coverage this volume deserves to be read through at least twice. This volume is highly recommended for undergraduate majors and graduate students in the biological sciences, as well as for evolutionary and cognitive neuroscientists. * Paul Tibbetts, Quarterly Review of Biology *

Author Information

Georg F. Striedter is Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Neurobiology: A Functional Approach (2015) and Principles of Brain Evolution (2004). R. Glenn Northcutt is Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Unviersity of California, San Diego.

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