Terrence Deacon is Professor of Biological Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Deacon's research combines human evolutionary biology and neuroscience with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. His work extends from laboratory-based cellular-molecular neurobiology to the study of semiotic processes underlying animal and human communication, especially language and its origins. His 1997 book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition.

Professor Deacon delivered the following address at the 2006 ASC conference.