This coming Tuesday I’ll be giving a talk about the evolution and development of the human brain, as part of the seminar series of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences here at Nazarbayev University. My research doesn’t really fall neatly under the realms of ‘humanities and social sciences,’ so  the talk should be a neat change of pace for these SHSS seminars. I’ll be previewing something I’ve been working on with Dr. Jeremy DeSilva, and that I’ll be presenting at the AAPA conference in a few weeks. So if you can’t make it to Astana, maybe you can catch the shorter show in Knoxville!

Here’s info from the flier (sorry about the title, I’m new to this; also, I won’t be talking for 90 minutes):

4:20-5:50 pm
Tuesday, 26 March 2013

at Nazarbayev University, Block 7, Room 7-507
53 Kabanbay Batyr Ave.
Astana

Synopsis: Your brain is one of the most remarkable things to emerge in all the history of Life, and has been a critical part of humans’ adaptive success. This talk will examine how this machine came into existence. I will first describe how the brain grows and develops across an individual’s lifetime. Next I turn to the possible ways development was modified during the course of our evolution to result in our singularly powerful brains. Special attention is given to teasing out secrets of brain evolution from the dismal fossil record.