The question of language development and origin is a subject that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human. This is reflected in the large range of academic disciplines that are dedicated to the subject. Language development has in particular been related to studies in cognitive capacity and the ability for mind reading, often termed a theory of mind. The Social Brain Hypothesis has been the only attempt to correlate a cognitive scale of complexity incorporating a (...) theory of mind and intentionality orders to the archaeological record and hominin phylogeny. However, a method is still lacking that allows a correlation of the orders of intentionality (and by inference a theory of mind and language development) to the archaeological signatures that represent the physical expression of hominin behaviour. This paper is primarily concerned with introducing a new theoretical perspective – termed the identity model – which facilitates such a correlation between a scale of cognitive acuity, hominin behaviour through the archaeological record and subsequently language development within an evolutionary context. (shrink)

The lack of specificity in neuroimaging studies of neurological and psychiatric diseases suggests that these different diseases have more in common than is generally considered. Potentially, features that are secondary effects of different pathological processes may share common neurobiological underpinnings. Intriguingly, many of these mechanisms are also observed in studies of normal (i.e., non‐pathological) brain ageing. Different brain diseases may be causing premature or accelerated ageing to the brain, an idea that is supported by a line of “brain ageing” research (...) that combines neuroimaging data with machine learning analysis. In reviewing this field, I conclude that such observations could have important implications, suggesting that we should shift experimental paradigm: away from characterizing the average case‐control brain differences resulting from a disease toward methods that place individuals in their age‐appropriate context. This will also lead naturally to clinical applications, whereby neuroimaging can contribute to a personalized‐medicine approach to improve brain health. (shrink)