This narrative review synthesizes current scientific research on dolphin cognition, animal consciousness, and the neurobiological foundations of awareness in cetaceans. Integrating findings from neuroscience, comparative psychology, marine biology, and cognitive ethology, the review evaluates whether bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) exhibit behavioral and neural markers associated with conscious awareness in humans and other highly encephalized mammals. Key evidence includes dolphins’ highly gyrified neocortex, expanded association cortices, and specialized limbic structures; task-related EEG oscillatory activity tied to attention, memory, emotion, and social processing; and behavioral indicators such as mirror self-recognition, imitation, cultural transmission, vocal learning, and complex social cooperation.
Taken together, these lines of evidence suggest that dolphins possess advanced cognitive capacities consistent with self-awareness, metacognition, and subjective experience, while also highlighting the methodological and conceptual challenges of applying human-centered consciousness frameworks to marine mammals. This review contributes to interdisciplinary discussions in comparative cognition, consciousness studies, marine mammal neuroscience, and animal ethics by consolidating current knowledge on the evolution of intelligence and the neural bases of awareness. No new experimental data were collected for this review.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17634948
ResearchGate Link:
Neurophysiological and Behavioral Evidence of Conscious Awareness in Dolphins: A Narrative Review
A comprehensive narrative review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), analyzing its historical origins, political influences, and long-term impacts on digital copyright governance. It synthesizes scholarship from 1998–2024 to examine how international WIPO treaties, rapid technological change, and intensive industry lobbying shaped the Act’s development. The review evaluates the effects of anti-circumvention rules, safe harbor provisions, and platform liability frameworks on innovation, fair use, digital rights management, and platform power. It also outlines winners and losers under the current system, highlights tensions between federal uniformity and circuit-level judicial variation, and argues that evolving digital ecosystems, including AI, streaming, and platform governance, require substantial policy modernization. The paper concludes with a call for reassessment of the DMCA to better balance copyright protection, technological advancement, and public interest.
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28371224
ResearchGate Link:
Adapting Copyright Law for the Digital Age
