P. Thomas Schoenemann, Director

 

Dr. Schoenemann is an Associate Professor in Anthropology and Cognitive Science at Indiana University.is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at Indiana University, a Research Scientist at the Stone Age Institute, and a member of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University. His research interests are on the evolution of brain and behavior, with a special focus on language. He has done comparative work assessing primate differences in brain anatomy, with the goal of better understanding exactly how human brains are unique (and how they are not), he has collaborated with primate behavior researchers to probe how human cognition differs (and does not differ) from non-human primate cognition, and he has explored what might be inferred from fossil endocasts (braincases) of our ancestors about their behavior and cognition. His personal research website is here.

 

Lana Ruck, Ph.D. candidate

 

Lana is a Ph.D. candidate in the Cognitive Science Program and the Department of Anthropology at IU. She is interested in how paleolithic archaeology can inform us about the evolution of human cognition and language, and her research at IU is specifically on handedness and language laterality in the brain. Lana does research on Acheulean technology and hominin adaptation at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. At IU, she teaches labs for "Becoming Human," an Anthropology course in human evolution, and discussion sections for "Introduction to Cognitive Science."

 

Zara Anwarzai, Graduate student

 

As part of our work using fMRI to assess brain activity during stone tool manufacturing, Zara is focused on how humans came to have the capacity to form novel and creative mental representations of stone tool technology. In consideration of hypotheses about the possible co-evolution of language and technology, one key interest in this inquiry is whether language enabled early humans to have more complex mental representations, thus facilitating the manufacture of more complex stone tools. In accordance with these hypotheses, Zara is concentrated on interpreting activity in Broca's area in subjects during our fMRI study.

 

Chloe Holden, Graduate student

 

Chloe Holden is a Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Science Program and the Department of Anthropology at IU. Her research interests include the evolution of language and cognition, lithic analysis, experimental archaeology, fire use in the hominin lineage, and primatology. Chloe currently volunteers at the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative in Des Moines, Iowa, where she plans to pursue her research, in association with the Brain Evolution Lab and the Stone Age Institute, on language comprehension in apes and stone tool production. At IU, she currently writes for and is Social Media Chair for ScIU: Conversations in Science @ Indiana University.

 

Lauren Weed, Undergraduate student

 

Alvaro Michael, Undergraduate student

 

 

 

Alumni

 

Dr. Shelby Putt

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Illinois State University

 

Dr. Chung-Lin Martin Yang

Lecturer, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester

 

After undergoing training in neuroimaging techniques at IU Imaging Research Facility, Martin joined the lab as a postdoc in summer 2017. His major research interests include brain and language, language learning, human speech perception/production, and cognitive evolution. He has been working with Tom primarily on the fMRI project investigating the role of Broca's area in implicit sequential learning as well as another fMRI project on stone tool making. He is also conducting research on speech perception using electroencephalography (EEG). He left the lab in summer 2018 and started a new position at the University of Rochester. He is now teaching various undergraduate courses, including cognition, foundations of cognitive science, psycholinguistics, lab in cognitive neuroscience, and language use and understanding.

 

Del Hurst

 

Mackenzie Loyet

 

Lindsey Kitchell