Michael Adamaszek (editor) - The Emotional Cerebellum (Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 1378)

Cerebellum research is at a point where the close ties between the social-emotional cerebellum and the evolutionary rise of Homo sapiens can begin to be revealed. This idea is strongly supported by the detailed and verifiable paleontological analysis of the progression of socially, emotionally intense stone-tool making and the resultant capacities of the social-emotional cerebellum. These capacities drive uniquely human cumulative culture, the accumulated elaborations of culture we all share. The relatively new discipline of neuroanthropology (the study of the relationships between the brain and cumulative culture) proposes that the progressive evolution of stone-tool making was largely behind the evolution of Homo sapiens. This paleontological story can suggest that it is the social and emotional prediction capacity of the cerebellum that is to a very great extent behind the sapience we see in the astounding mental and technological elaborations of cumulative culture.

Linnaeus (1758) with limited knowledge of the brain in his time could only roughly refer to our species, with its great accumulation of culture, as Homo sapiens. However, the collective significance of the chapters of this book provides evidence that strongly supports the idea that the emotional, cognitive, and social functions of the cerebellum can be said to be the fundamental key behind our unique human ability to constantly move toward an optimized cumulative culture. With the tremendous advances in just how the cerebellum contributes to the rise of our cumulative culture consisting of everything from art, music, language, and mathematics to technology that mimics the mind (computers), perhaps it is time to embrace the massive contributions of the cerebellum as Linnaeus might have if he had known what cerebellum research and the authors of this book have providedmight he have understood that the cerebellum plays many key roles in our understanding of the meaning of the sapience of Homo sapiens?