Lab Members

Projects

Publications

Collaborators

Bill Hopkins, Ph. D

Curriculum Vitae

My main research interest is in the evolution of hemispheric specialization in primates. To facilitate my research, in addition to teaching at Agnes Scott College, I also hold the appointment of Research Scientist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University. I am also a Research Associate at the Language Research Center of Georgia State University, where I completed my Ph.D. in 1990. The research in my laboratory has three main areas of focus. One central interest is the documentation of functional asymmetries in non-human primates, notably chimpanzees and other great apes including bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. This has included assessments of handedness, visual-half field studies and behavioral studies of facial expressions.
 
The second line of behavioral research on laterality in chimpanzees has focused on gestural communication and this work has largely been conducted in collaboration with Dr. David Leavens, now at the University of Sussex. Dr. Leavens and I have been particularly interested in the functional use of gestural communication in chimpanzees, particularly with reference to the intentional and referential use of these signaling systems. In these studies, we have derived a number of experimental conditions in which the chimpanzees can use different modes of communication with humans. In addition, we have examined the effect of vocal signaling on lateralized hand use for manual gestures.

Third, we have recently begun to assess neuroanatomical asymmetries in non-human primates including monkeys and apes. Currently, we have a collection of over 25 New World monkeys (rhesus monkeys, sooty mangabeys) and 50 great apes (5 bonobos, 3 gorillas, 5 orangutans, and 37 chimpanzees). Some of the collection is made up of cadaver specimens but the bulk is specimens that are in vivo magnetic resonance images (MRI) scans collected with a 1.5 T scanner at Emory University. The central question of interest in this work is to describe and quantify neuroanatomical asymmetries for different brains regions including the planum temporale (PT), Brodmann’s area 44 (part of Broca’s area), sylvian fissure length and aspects of the primary motor cortex. In addition, we have also examined general patterns of brain asymmetry including cerebral width, cerebral volume and corpus callosum morphology. We are also trying to assess the relationship directional asymmetries in certain brain areas and functional asymmetries, such as handedness.