Project acronym AgeConsolidate
Project The Missing Link of Episodic Memory Decline in Aging: The Role of Inefficient Systems Consolidation
Researcher (PI) Anders Martin FJELL
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Which brain mechanisms are responsible for the faith of the memories we make with age, whether they wither or stay, and in what form? Episodic memory function does decline with age. While this decline can have multiple causes, research has focused almost entirely on encoding and retrieval processes, largely ignoring a third critical process– consolidation. The objective of AgeConsolidate is to provide this missing link, by combining novel experimental cognitive paradigms with neuroimaging in a longitudinal large-scale attempt to directly test how age-related changes in consolidation processes in the brain impact episodic memory decline. The ambitious aims of the present proposal are two-fold:
(1) Use recent advances in memory consolidation theory to achieve an elaborate model of episodic memory deficits in aging
(2) Use aging as a model to uncover how structural and functional brain changes affect episodic memory consolidation in general
The novelty of the project lies in the synthesis of recent methodological advances and theoretical models for episodic memory consolidation to explain age-related decline, by employing a unique combination of a range of different techniques and approaches. This is ground-breaking, in that it aims at taking our understanding of the brain processes underlying episodic memory decline in aging to a new level, while at the same time advancing our theoretical understanding of how episodic memories are consolidated in the human brain. To obtain this outcome, I will test the main hypothesis of the project: Brain processes of episodic memory consolidation are less effective in older adults, and this can account for a significant portion of the episodic memory decline in aging. This will be answered by six secondary hypotheses, with 1-3 experiments or tasks designated to address each hypothesis, focusing on functional and structural MRI, positron emission tomography data and sleep experiments to target consolidation from different angles.
Summary
Which brain mechanisms are responsible for the faith of the memories we make with age, whether they wither or stay, and in what form? Episodic memory function does decline with age. While this decline can have multiple causes, research has focused almost entirely on encoding and retrieval processes, largely ignoring a third critical process– consolidation. The objective of AgeConsolidate is to provide this missing link, by combining novel experimental cognitive paradigms with neuroimaging in a longitudinal large-scale attempt to directly test how age-related changes in consolidation processes in the brain impact episodic memory decline. The ambitious aims of the present proposal are two-fold:
(1) Use recent advances in memory consolidation theory to achieve an elaborate model of episodic memory deficits in aging
(2) Use aging as a model to uncover how structural and functional brain changes affect episodic memory consolidation in general
The novelty of the project lies in the synthesis of recent methodological advances and theoretical models for episodic memory consolidation to explain age-related decline, by employing a unique combination of a range of different techniques and approaches. This is ground-breaking, in that it aims at taking our understanding of the brain processes underlying episodic memory decline in aging to a new level, while at the same time advancing our theoretical understanding of how episodic memories are consolidated in the human brain. To obtain this outcome, I will test the main hypothesis of the project: Brain processes of episodic memory consolidation are less effective in older adults, and this can account for a significant portion of the episodic memory decline in aging. This will be answered by six secondary hypotheses, with 1-3 experiments or tasks designated to address each hypothesis, focusing on functional and structural MRI, positron emission tomography data and sleep experiments to target consolidation from different angles.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 482 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30
Project acronym EarlyModernCosmology
Project Institutions and Metaphysics of Cosmology in the Epistemic Networks of Seventeenth-Century Europe
Researcher (PI) Pietro Daniel OMODEO
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The focus of this project is the competing confessional discourses on cosmology of the seventeenth century, an epoch in which religious conflicts originated opposing ‘epistemic cultures’, which were embodied in scholarly institutions and networks such as the Protestant web of northern European universities or the global web of Jesuit colleges.
In the Early Modern Period cosmological controversies (over issues such as heliocentrism, plurality of worlds, space, infinity, cometary theory, celestial matter and fluidity) were heated and amplified by increasing political and confessional fragmentation. The Roman prohibition of the Copernican system (1616) and the extraordinary condemnation of Galileo (1633) accelerated the formation of competing cosmological cultures along confessional and political lines of alliance and opposition. This research project addresses the interrelations between [1.] cosmological debates in the northern European Protestant institutional networks of scholars and institutions and [2.] cosmological debates in Jesuit institutional networks aiming at [3.] a comparative assessment of early formations and transformations of epistemic webs. It considers parallelisms and contrasts, negotiations and intersections of seventeenth-century cosmological discourses between scholars, institutions and scientific communities belonging to different epistemic cultures. This endeavor brings into focus the political-confessional dimension of early-modern cosmology and shows how science is embedded in struggles for cultural hegemony, struggles which were at once institutional and ideological. While there is a great deal of in-depth study on the history of science in various early-modern confessional contexts, a comparative study bringing together the history of knowledge institutions and their metaphysical legitimation is still a desideratum.
Summary
The focus of this project is the competing confessional discourses on cosmology of the seventeenth century, an epoch in which religious conflicts originated opposing ‘epistemic cultures’, which were embodied in scholarly institutions and networks such as the Protestant web of northern European universities or the global web of Jesuit colleges.
In the Early Modern Period cosmological controversies (over issues such as heliocentrism, plurality of worlds, space, infinity, cometary theory, celestial matter and fluidity) were heated and amplified by increasing political and confessional fragmentation. The Roman prohibition of the Copernican system (1616) and the extraordinary condemnation of Galileo (1633) accelerated the formation of competing cosmological cultures along confessional and political lines of alliance and opposition. This research project addresses the interrelations between [1.] cosmological debates in the northern European Protestant institutional networks of scholars and institutions and [2.] cosmological debates in Jesuit institutional networks aiming at [3.] a comparative assessment of early formations and transformations of epistemic webs. It considers parallelisms and contrasts, negotiations and intersections of seventeenth-century cosmological discourses between scholars, institutions and scientific communities belonging to different epistemic cultures. This endeavor brings into focus the political-confessional dimension of early-modern cosmology and shows how science is embedded in struggles for cultural hegemony, struggles which were at once institutional and ideological. While there is a great deal of in-depth study on the history of science in various early-modern confessional contexts, a comparative study bringing together the history of knowledge institutions and their metaphysical legitimation is still a desideratum.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 976 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-11-01, End date: 2022-10-31
Project acronym GEOCOG
Project Cognitive Geometry: Deciphering neural concept spaces and engineering knowledge to empower smart brains in a smart society
Researcher (PI) Christian Fritz Andreas DOELLER
Host Institution (HI) NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Through smart technology, we are overwhelmed with new information. Does this unlimited access to knowledge make us smarter? One of the key challenges for modern societies is to understand how the brain assembles our rich inventory of knowledge. Here, I will test the hypothesis that newly acquired knowledge is represented in the hippocampal formation in neural concept spaces, which are based on the coding principles and representational structures of the neural machinery involved in spatial navigation. The key idea is that the brain’s navigation system provides the building blocks of a neural metric for knowledge. In this groundbreaking cognitive neuroscience framework, I will bridge and integrate principles from Nobel Prize awarded neurophysiology and concepts from cognitive science and philosophy. Partly building on my ERC-StG project in which I discovered the core neural mechanisms underlying reconfiguration, integration and scaling of memory networks, the aim of my proposal is two-fold: 1. I seek to decipher neural concept spaces and unravel the neural codes of a cognitive geometry for knowledge and its deformations. 2. I will provide a proof-of-principle framework for next-generation neurocognitive technology and neural user models for cognitive enhancement to edit memories and engineer knowledge. Novel ‘Wikipedia’ learning tasks will be combined with state-of-the-art pattern analyses of space-resolved fMRI and time-resolved MEG to map and quantify representational structures. I will further develop AI-inspired analyses and closed loop brain-computer interfaces to perturb and edit neural concept space. The integrative mission of my program, from cells to systems-level involvement in cognition and to technology, opens up the exciting possibility to lay the ground for redefining cognitive neuroscience of knowledge by unravelling the fundamental neural principles of a cognitive topography and to make critical translations to empower smart brains in a smart society.
Summary
Through smart technology, we are overwhelmed with new information. Does this unlimited access to knowledge make us smarter? One of the key challenges for modern societies is to understand how the brain assembles our rich inventory of knowledge. Here, I will test the hypothesis that newly acquired knowledge is represented in the hippocampal formation in neural concept spaces, which are based on the coding principles and representational structures of the neural machinery involved in spatial navigation. The key idea is that the brain’s navigation system provides the building blocks of a neural metric for knowledge. In this groundbreaking cognitive neuroscience framework, I will bridge and integrate principles from Nobel Prize awarded neurophysiology and concepts from cognitive science and philosophy. Partly building on my ERC-StG project in which I discovered the core neural mechanisms underlying reconfiguration, integration and scaling of memory networks, the aim of my proposal is two-fold: 1. I seek to decipher neural concept spaces and unravel the neural codes of a cognitive geometry for knowledge and its deformations. 2. I will provide a proof-of-principle framework for next-generation neurocognitive technology and neural user models for cognitive enhancement to edit memories and engineer knowledge. Novel ‘Wikipedia’ learning tasks will be combined with state-of-the-art pattern analyses of space-resolved fMRI and time-resolved MEG to map and quantify representational structures. I will further develop AI-inspired analyses and closed loop brain-computer interfaces to perturb and edit neural concept space. The integrative mission of my program, from cells to systems-level involvement in cognition and to technology, opens up the exciting possibility to lay the ground for redefining cognitive neuroscience of knowledge by unravelling the fundamental neural principles of a cognitive topography and to make critical translations to empower smart brains in a smart society.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30
Project acronym GRETPOL
Project Greening the Poles: Science, the Environment, and the Creation of the Modern Arctic and Antarctic
Researcher (PI) Peder ROBERTS
Host Institution (HI) KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2016-STG
Summary This project investigates how and why environmental concerns have become so important to our conceptions of the polar regions today. Through a historical study of both the Arctic and Antarctic from 1945 to the turn of the past century, the project explores the connections between how environments are described - particularly through the natural sciences and economics - and the judgments made about how those environments should be administered. The key hypothesis of this project is that the process of describing an environment cannot be separated from the process of controlling and managing it. Changing perceptions of concepts such as development, ecological fragility, and wilderness have provided frames for describing and understanding the polar regions. Why has natural resource extraction been deemed appropriate (or even necessary) in some contexts, and wholly forbidden in others? Why did the concept of sustainable development become important during the 1980s? Can we think of scientific research programs as instruments of colonialism? And why did national parks and conservation agreements become politically useful? GRETPOL will produce a new understanding of how far from being the passive frames for human action, environments (in the polar regions but indeed also beyond) are constructed by human agency. As anthropogenic climate change reduces polar ice extent and threatens the entire globe, the question has never been timelier.
Summary
This project investigates how and why environmental concerns have become so important to our conceptions of the polar regions today. Through a historical study of both the Arctic and Antarctic from 1945 to the turn of the past century, the project explores the connections between how environments are described - particularly through the natural sciences and economics - and the judgments made about how those environments should be administered. The key hypothesis of this project is that the process of describing an environment cannot be separated from the process of controlling and managing it. Changing perceptions of concepts such as development, ecological fragility, and wilderness have provided frames for describing and understanding the polar regions. Why has natural resource extraction been deemed appropriate (or even necessary) in some contexts, and wholly forbidden in others? Why did the concept of sustainable development become important during the 1980s? Can we think of scientific research programs as instruments of colonialism? And why did national parks and conservation agreements become politically useful? GRETPOL will produce a new understanding of how far from being the passive frames for human action, environments (in the polar regions but indeed also beyond) are constructed by human agency. As anthropogenic climate change reduces polar ice extent and threatens the entire globe, the question has never been timelier.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 952 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym InStance
Project Intentional stance for social attunement
Researcher (PI) Agnieszka Anna Wykowska
Host Institution (HI) FONDAZIONE ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI TECNOLOGIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2016-STG
Summary In daily social interactions, we constantly attribute mental states, such as beliefs or intentions, to other humans – to understand and predict their behaviour. Today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple’s Siri to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we will casually interact with robots. However, since we consider artificial agents to have no mental states, we tend to not attune socially with them in the sense of activating our mechanisms of social cognition. This is because it seems pointless to socially attune to something that does not carry social meaning (mental content) under the surface of an observed behaviour. INSTANCE will break new ground in social cognition research by identifying factors that influence attribution of mental states to others and social attunement with humans or artificial agents. The objectives of INSTANCE are to (1) determine parameters of others’ behaviour that make us attribute mental states to them, (2) explore parameters relevant for social attunement, (3) elucidate further factors – culture and experience – that influence attribution of mental states to agents and, thereby social attunement. INSTANCE’s objectives are highly relevant not only for fundamental research in social cognition, but also for the applied field of social robotics, where robots are expected to become humans’ social companions. Indeed, if we do not attune socially to artificial agents viewed as mindless machines, then robots may end up not working well enough in contexts where interaction is paramount. INSTANCE’s unique approach combining cognitive neuroscience methods with real-time human-robot interaction will address the challenge of social attunement between humans and artificial agents. Subtle features of robot behaviour (e.g., timing or pattern of eye movements) will be manipulated. The impact of such features on social attunement (e.g., joint attention) will be examined with behavioural, neural and physiological measures.
Summary
In daily social interactions, we constantly attribute mental states, such as beliefs or intentions, to other humans – to understand and predict their behaviour. Today we also routinely interact with artificial agents: from Apple’s Siri to GPS navigation systems. In the near future, we will casually interact with robots. However, since we consider artificial agents to have no mental states, we tend to not attune socially with them in the sense of activating our mechanisms of social cognition. This is because it seems pointless to socially attune to something that does not carry social meaning (mental content) under the surface of an observed behaviour. INSTANCE will break new ground in social cognition research by identifying factors that influence attribution of mental states to others and social attunement with humans or artificial agents. The objectives of INSTANCE are to (1) determine parameters of others’ behaviour that make us attribute mental states to them, (2) explore parameters relevant for social attunement, (3) elucidate further factors – culture and experience – that influence attribution of mental states to agents and, thereby social attunement. INSTANCE’s objectives are highly relevant not only for fundamental research in social cognition, but also for the applied field of social robotics, where robots are expected to become humans’ social companions. Indeed, if we do not attune socially to artificial agents viewed as mindless machines, then robots may end up not working well enough in contexts where interaction is paramount. INSTANCE’s unique approach combining cognitive neuroscience methods with real-time human-robot interaction will address the challenge of social attunement between humans and artificial agents. Subtle features of robot behaviour (e.g., timing or pattern of eye movements) will be manipulated. The impact of such features on social attunement (e.g., joint attention) will be examined with behavioural, neural and physiological measures.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 937 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30
Project acronym PASSIM
Project Patents as Scientific Information, 1895-2020
Researcher (PI) Eva Susan Margareta HEMMUNGS WIRTÉN
Host Institution (HI) LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2016-ADG
Summary “History will remember Barack Obama as the great Slayer of Patent Trolls.” The headline from the 2014 March 20 issue of Wired credits POTUS with, perhaps, an unexpected feat. Referring to companies in the sole business of enforcing patents beyond their actual value, trolls are a recent installment in the history of an intellectual property whose ubiquitousness the Latin word PASSIM (“here and there, everywhere”) neatly captures. In the eye of the storm stands the patent bargain: disclosure of information in return for a limited monopoly. This contractual moment makes patents a source of information, the basis of new innovation. Or does it? By posing this simple question, PASSIM’s bold take on the legitimacy of intellectual property in the governance of informational resources follow patents as legal and informational documents during three historical “patent phases,” producing a visionary and theoretically savvy interpretation of intellectual property that stems from its humanities-based and interdisciplinary project design. PASSIM shows a way out of current analytical gridlocks that earmark the understanding of the role of intellectual property in knowledge infrastructures—most notably the enclosure/openness dichotomy—and provides a fresh take on the complexity of informational processes. A key steppingstone in the PI’s career, her own contribution to PASSIM will be a work of synthesis, highlighting major tendencies in the history of patents as scientific information from 1895 to the present. Four complementary empirical studies target specific themes that strengthen PASSIM’s validity and impact: questions of copyrights in patents, scientists’ patenting strategies both historically and today, the relationship between bibliometrics and patentometrics, and the status of the patent as a legal and informational document. Outputs include workshops, articles, monographs, policy papers and documentation of the project’s experiences with interdisciplinary self-reflexivity.
Summary
“History will remember Barack Obama as the great Slayer of Patent Trolls.” The headline from the 2014 March 20 issue of Wired credits POTUS with, perhaps, an unexpected feat. Referring to companies in the sole business of enforcing patents beyond their actual value, trolls are a recent installment in the history of an intellectual property whose ubiquitousness the Latin word PASSIM (“here and there, everywhere”) neatly captures. In the eye of the storm stands the patent bargain: disclosure of information in return for a limited monopoly. This contractual moment makes patents a source of information, the basis of new innovation. Or does it? By posing this simple question, PASSIM’s bold take on the legitimacy of intellectual property in the governance of informational resources follow patents as legal and informational documents during three historical “patent phases,” producing a visionary and theoretically savvy interpretation of intellectual property that stems from its humanities-based and interdisciplinary project design. PASSIM shows a way out of current analytical gridlocks that earmark the understanding of the role of intellectual property in knowledge infrastructures—most notably the enclosure/openness dichotomy—and provides a fresh take on the complexity of informational processes. A key steppingstone in the PI’s career, her own contribution to PASSIM will be a work of synthesis, highlighting major tendencies in the history of patents as scientific information from 1895 to the present. Four complementary empirical studies target specific themes that strengthen PASSIM’s validity and impact: questions of copyrights in patents, scientists’ patenting strategies both historically and today, the relationship between bibliometrics and patentometrics, and the status of the patent as a legal and informational document. Outputs include workshops, articles, monographs, policy papers and documentation of the project’s experiences with interdisciplinary self-reflexivity.
Max ERC Funding
2 261 523 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-10-01, End date: 2022-09-30
Project acronym SIMULTAN
Project Aging-related changes in brain activation and deactivation during cognition: novel insights into the physiology of the human mind from simultaneous PET-fMRI imaging
Researcher (PI) Anna RIECKMANN
Host Institution (HI) UMEA UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2016-STG
Summary There is no doubt that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has led to a breakthrough in our ability to measure how the complexities of the mind are rooted in biology. However, deactivation of certain brain areas during cognitive control and increased activation of prefrontal areas in aging are two examples of consistently found patterns of fMRI activation that have had a large impact on the study of the human mind, but that prompt major questions of interpretation. The physiological basis of the fMRI signal reflects interplay between hemodynamics and metabolic demands that vary across the brain, as well as between different tasks and individuals, and cannot be resolved by fMRI alone. To be able to use non-invasive imaging to distinguish a normally aging brain from one that is in the pre-clinical stages of disease, it is important to understand the neurobiological basis of these functional brain changes. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a molecular imaging method that is able to monitor brain glucose metabolism, which stems primarily from synaptic activity and is invariant to changes in blood flow. Studies that have made use of the complementary information gained from fMRI and PET to investigate human brain function have had to rely on sequential scans, and correlation of the signals from both modalities between individuals. The investigation of within-person switches between different mental states with complementary modalities is only made possible by the recent development of a hybrid PET-MR system, which, for the first time, allows simultaneous assessment of fMRI signal, blood flow and PET glucose metabolism during cognitive task performance. The proposal is structured in three work packages that include PET-fMRI scans in 30 healthy younger and 40 older adults. The analyses are designed to disentangle the hemodynamic and metabolic contributions to fMRI deactivations and prefrontal over-activation in aging during cognitive task performance.
Summary
There is no doubt that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has led to a breakthrough in our ability to measure how the complexities of the mind are rooted in biology. However, deactivation of certain brain areas during cognitive control and increased activation of prefrontal areas in aging are two examples of consistently found patterns of fMRI activation that have had a large impact on the study of the human mind, but that prompt major questions of interpretation. The physiological basis of the fMRI signal reflects interplay between hemodynamics and metabolic demands that vary across the brain, as well as between different tasks and individuals, and cannot be resolved by fMRI alone. To be able to use non-invasive imaging to distinguish a normally aging brain from one that is in the pre-clinical stages of disease, it is important to understand the neurobiological basis of these functional brain changes. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a molecular imaging method that is able to monitor brain glucose metabolism, which stems primarily from synaptic activity and is invariant to changes in blood flow. Studies that have made use of the complementary information gained from fMRI and PET to investigate human brain function have had to rely on sequential scans, and correlation of the signals from both modalities between individuals. The investigation of within-person switches between different mental states with complementary modalities is only made possible by the recent development of a hybrid PET-MR system, which, for the first time, allows simultaneous assessment of fMRI signal, blood flow and PET glucose metabolism during cognitive task performance. The proposal is structured in three work packages that include PET-fMRI scans in 30 healthy younger and 40 older adults. The analyses are designed to disentangle the hemodynamic and metabolic contributions to fMRI deactivations and prefrontal over-activation in aging during cognitive task performance.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 544 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31
Project acronym SMITE
Project Social Mobility and Inequality across Italy and Europe: 1300-1800
Researcher (PI) Guido ALFANI
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA COMMERCIALE LUIGI BOCCONI
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The goal of SMITE is to improve our knowledge of long-term trends in social mobility, from the decades immediately preceding the Black Death of 1347-49 up until the eve of Industrialization. The objective is not only to measure mobility, but also to understand its consequences for the economy and society at large. Very few data about preindustrial social mobility are available today, especially for southern Europe. SMITE will collect an extensive database about social mobility, measured in different ways including: economic mobility across wealth classes and occupational mobility. Archival research will be concentrated on Italy where excellent sources exist, but the Italian case will be placed in the wider European context. The few existing databases from all over the continent will be collected for comparison and direct research will be done on some regions of Europe beyond Italy, especially in France, Spain and the Low Countries.
SMITE will reconstruct social mobility trends both in growing and in declining areas of Europe. The connection between social mobility and economic growth will be assessed. SMITE will also analyse in detail the connection between long-term changes in social mobility and in economic inequality, which is a novel and potentially very important research avenue. It will receive from an earlier ERC project (EINITE) the largest existing database on preindustrial inequality. It will study whether the growth in economic inequality, which seems to have characterized both northern and southern Europe during the early modern period, went hand in hand with an increase in upward social mobility or whether there were differences across the continent. In fact, upward social mobility might have slowed down in southern Europe from ca. 1600 (as some literature suggests) but not in the North, thus determining in the South a particularly unfavourable combination of high inequality and a closed society which might have contributed to the North-South divergence
Summary
The goal of SMITE is to improve our knowledge of long-term trends in social mobility, from the decades immediately preceding the Black Death of 1347-49 up until the eve of Industrialization. The objective is not only to measure mobility, but also to understand its consequences for the economy and society at large. Very few data about preindustrial social mobility are available today, especially for southern Europe. SMITE will collect an extensive database about social mobility, measured in different ways including: economic mobility across wealth classes and occupational mobility. Archival research will be concentrated on Italy where excellent sources exist, but the Italian case will be placed in the wider European context. The few existing databases from all over the continent will be collected for comparison and direct research will be done on some regions of Europe beyond Italy, especially in France, Spain and the Low Countries.
SMITE will reconstruct social mobility trends both in growing and in declining areas of Europe. The connection between social mobility and economic growth will be assessed. SMITE will also analyse in detail the connection between long-term changes in social mobility and in economic inequality, which is a novel and potentially very important research avenue. It will receive from an earlier ERC project (EINITE) the largest existing database on preindustrial inequality. It will study whether the growth in economic inequality, which seems to have characterized both northern and southern Europe during the early modern period, went hand in hand with an increase in upward social mobility or whether there were differences across the continent. In fact, upward social mobility might have slowed down in southern Europe from ca. 1600 (as some literature suggests) but not in the North, thus determining in the South a particularly unfavourable combination of high inequality and a closed society which might have contributed to the North-South divergence
Max ERC Funding
1 499 375 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31
Project acronym SUCCESS
Project The earliest migration of Homo sapiens in Southern Europe: understanding the biocultural processes that define our uniqueness
Researcher (PI) Stefano Benazzi
Host Institution (HI) ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) radiated out of Africa into the rest of the world around 60,000-50,000 years ago. While various evidence suggests arrivals of AMHs in Asia and Australia ca. 45,000 calendar years before present (cal BP), the timing and pattern of the biological and cultural shifts that occurred in Europe around 50,000 to 35,000 cal BP, are hotly debated and are considered to be among the most important questions in paleoanthropology. This period documents 1) the demise of the autochthons Neandertals and their replacement by AMHs as well as 2) dramatic changes in human behaviour and the appearance of various technocomplexes that replaced pre-existing Mousterian cultures. Debate revolves around the question of whether modern behaviour was independently achieved by Neandertals or is directly related to the arrival of AMH. In this context Italy plays a pivotal role due to its geographic position and ecological variability, and key archaeological sites with transitional and early Upper Paleolithic cultures.
This interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary project aims to understand when AMHs arrived in Southern Europe, the biocultural processes that favoured their successful adaptation and the final cause of Neandertal extinction.
The project involves survey in Italy and field investigations of key archaeological sites dating to the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic Transition, paleoecological, zooarchaeological, paleoanthropological and isotope analyses, studies of pigments, ornaments, lithic and bone tools, as well as statistical modeling using cutting-edge protocols. The results of this work will be of pivotal importance for understanding a key period in European prehistory and, more generally, the biocultural, adaptive and ecological characteristics that make our species successful and unique. It implies that this project will be crucial for understanding the replacement of all hominin species by AMHs around the world.
Summary
Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) radiated out of Africa into the rest of the world around 60,000-50,000 years ago. While various evidence suggests arrivals of AMHs in Asia and Australia ca. 45,000 calendar years before present (cal BP), the timing and pattern of the biological and cultural shifts that occurred in Europe around 50,000 to 35,000 cal BP, are hotly debated and are considered to be among the most important questions in paleoanthropology. This period documents 1) the demise of the autochthons Neandertals and their replacement by AMHs as well as 2) dramatic changes in human behaviour and the appearance of various technocomplexes that replaced pre-existing Mousterian cultures. Debate revolves around the question of whether modern behaviour was independently achieved by Neandertals or is directly related to the arrival of AMH. In this context Italy plays a pivotal role due to its geographic position and ecological variability, and key archaeological sites with transitional and early Upper Paleolithic cultures.
This interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary project aims to understand when AMHs arrived in Southern Europe, the biocultural processes that favoured their successful adaptation and the final cause of Neandertal extinction.
The project involves survey in Italy and field investigations of key archaeological sites dating to the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic Transition, paleoecological, zooarchaeological, paleoanthropological and isotope analyses, studies of pigments, ornaments, lithic and bone tools, as well as statistical modeling using cutting-edge protocols. The results of this work will be of pivotal importance for understanding a key period in European prehistory and, more generally, the biocultural, adaptive and ecological characteristics that make our species successful and unique. It implies that this project will be crucial for understanding the replacement of all hominin species by AMHs around the world.
Max ERC Funding
1 993 811 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30
