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DR. LORI MARINO
The NewScientist article
Whales boast the brain cells that "make us human" said
Whales may share our kind of intelligence, researchers say after
discovering brain cells previously found only in humans and other
primates.
They were touted as the brain cells that set humans and the other great
apes apart from all other mammals. Now it has been discovered that some
whales also have spindle neurons — specialized brain cells that
are
involved in processing emotions and helping us interact
socially.
"The discovery of spindle neurons in cetaceans is a stunning example
of
neuro-anatomical convergence between cetaceans and primates," says Lori
Marino of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US. "The common
ancestor
of cetaceans and primates lived over 95 million years ago, and such a
highly specific morphological similarity as the finding of spindle
cells is clearly due to evolutionary convergence, not shared
ancestry," she says.
"This is consistent with a growing body of evidence for parallels
between cetaceans and primates in cognitive abilities, behaviour and
social ecology."
Lori Marino, Ph.D. is
Senior Lecturer, Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program, Emory
University, Adjunct Faculty, Department of Psychology, Emory
University,
Affiliate Faculty, Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape
and Human Evolution, and
Emory University
Research Associate, National Museum of Natural History, The Smithsonian
Institution.
She is on the Board of Reviewers for
The Anatomical Record, and on the
Editorial Board for
International Journal of Comparative Psychology.
She is a member of the Society for Marine Mammalogy,
Animal Behavior Society,
International Society for Comparative Psychology, and
J. B. Johnston Club in Comparative and Evolutionary Neurobiology.
Lori authored
The Evolution of Intelligence: An Integral Part of SETI and
Astrobiology and
coauthored
Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of
Cognitive
Convergence,
The Navigable Atlas of the Dolphin Brain
(includes complete series of dolphin MRI images),
Origin and evolution of large brains in toothed whales,
Bubble ring play of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus):
Implications for cognition,
Planum temporale asymmetries in great apes as revealed by magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI), and
Relative Volume of the Cerebellum in Dolphins and Comparison with
Anthropoid Primates.
Read her
full list of publications!
Lori earned a B.A. in Psychology, Biology minor, with Honors in
Psychobiology from New York University in 1982, a M.A. in Experimental
Psychology from Miami University, Ohio in 1989, and a Ph.D. in
Biopsychology from the State University of New York at Albany in 1995.
Her thesis was "Brain-behavior relationships in cetaceans and primates:
Implications for the
evolution of complex intelligence".
Listen to her
interview on "Science in Your Life" about intelligence in
cetaceans.
Listen to her on
CBC radio.
Read her
SETI
profile.
Print bio!
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