William Hopkins

William (Bill) Donald Hopkins is a Professor of Neuroscience in the Institute of Neuroscience, Georgia State University, Georgia, U.S.A. Professor Hopkins has published over 310 journal articles, book chapters, and edited books. He specializes in functional asymmetries in brain organization and in behavior, especially in great apes, and has pioneered the use of non-invasive imaging techniques to directly measure details of brain organization, including both positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Professor Hopkins has also made fundamental discoveries in communication dynamics in great apes, building on these findings to support an emerging new theoretical perspective on the evolution of language. Great apes are humans’ closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, and therefore they serve as a scientifically important comparison group for the elucidation of the evolutionary changes that have occurred in the human lineage, since we last shared a common ancestor with the great apes, approximately seven million years ago.