Cognitive Demands of Lower Paleolithic Toolmaking

Dietrich Stout , Erin Hecht (1) , Nada Khreisheh , Bruce Bradley (2) , Thierry Chaminade (3)

1 Department of Psychology
2 Departement of Archaeology
3 INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone

Stone tools provide some of the most abundant, continuous, and high resolution evidence of behavioral change over human evolution, but their implications for cognitive evolution have remained unclear. We investigated the neurophysiological demands of stone toolmaking by training modern subjects in known Paleolithic methods ("Oldowan", "Acheulean") and collecting structural and functional brain imaging data as they made technical judgments (outcome prediction, strategic appropriateness) about planned actions on partially completed tools. Results show that this task affected neural activity and functional connectivity in dorsal prefrontal cortex, that effect magnitude correlated with the frequency of correct strategic judgments, and that the frequency of correct strategic judgments was predictive of success in Acheulean, but not Oldowan, toolmaking. This corroborates hypothesized cognitive control demands of Acheulean toolmaking, specifically including information monitoring and manipulation functions attributed to the "central executive" of working memory. More broadly, it develops empirical methods for assessing the differential cognitive demands of Paleolithic technologies, and expands the scope of evolutionary hypotheses that can be tested using the available archaeological record.

Mots clés: INTRINSIC FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY; SUPERIOR FRONTAL GYRUS; STONE TOOL TECHNOLOGY; HUMAN-EVOLUTION; WORKING-MEMORY; HUMAN BRAIN; CORTEX; ORGANIZATION; ATTENTION; NETWORKS

Domaines: Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]

Dietrich Stout, Erin Hecht, Nada Khreisheh, Bruce Bradley, Thierry Chaminade. Cognitive Demands of Lower Paleolithic Toolmaking. PLoS ONE, 2015, 10 (e0121804), ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0121804⟩. ⟨hal-01215840⟩