Boldly going where no brain has gone: Futures of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience

Abstract

Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience (ECN) is a new discipline that employs methodology from cognitive neuroscience to study, in vivo, the proximate mechanisms of putative evolved psychological/cognitive adaptations. The formalized discipline is less than five years old, but has already generated a plethora of research as well as extended our understanding of the evolved nature of the mind/brain. Here we briefly recapitulate the antecedents to an evolutionarily informed cognitive neuroscience, attempt to fit ECN into a broader evolutionary psychology framework that seeks to account for evolved adaptations to recurrent problems faced by our ancestors, and discuss the futures of this newly formed discipline by expounding on methodological techniques and theoretical accounts that may pervade our future. We believe, as the Nobel laureate Nikko Tinbergen has suggested, that a complete understanding of the evolved nature of behavior and cognition (i.e., evolved cognitive adaptations) can only come from investigations at both the proximate and ultimate levels and, thus here, we attempt to cast ECN as the proximate sister discipline to evolutionary psychology. When taken together these two disciplines have the potential to uncover how and why the mind works.