FACULTY & STAFF
 

        University at Albany anthropologist Dean Falk recently contributed the lead opinion piece on brain development for the British Broadcast Company's (BBC’s) latest BBC Online Landmark Series, “Ape Man: Adventures in Human Evolution.”
    Falk, whose research specializes in early hominids, brain evolution, comparative neuroanatomy and cognitive evolution, has also been filmed and interviewed - along with UAlbany graduate student John Guyer - by the BBC for its upcoming television documentary, Apeman.
    On the BBC Web site, Falk writes about the relationship between the size and shape of skulls “of our early relatives, the australopithecines,” and the brain development within them, as revealed by fossilized remains of humans’ primate ancestors. 
    “The outside portion of the brain, or cerebral cortex, is the part most responsible for the mental complexities that distinguish humans from other primates,” Falk writes on the BBC site. “For this reason, important clues may be gleaned from imprints left by the cerebral cortex on the inner surfaces of fossilized australopithecine skulls . . .
    “Each new discovery of even a part of a fossilized braincase therefore has the potential for adding greatly to our knowledge about australopithecine cerebral cortices.”
    Research on cranial blood flow and australopithecine endocasts led Falk in 1992 to develop the “radiator theory” of brain evolution, and to question the conventional interpretations of certain fossils such as the early hominid known as “Lucy”. An honorary professor of the Institute of Human Biology at the University of Vienna, she collaborates with Professor Horst Seidler and colleagues in the application of medical imaging to the study of middle Pleistocene hominids.
    She recently participated in an international archeological expedition to Ethiopia that uncovered a new site of important fossil remains. It promises to further her efforts into the study of brain evolution.