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
