Anderson Michael L
Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003, USA.
Neuroscientist. 2007 Feb;13(1):13-21. doi: 10.1177/1073858406294706.
The creative reuse of existing neural components may have played a significant role in the evolutionary development of cognition. There are obvious evolutionary advantages to such redeployment, and the data presented here confirm three important empirical predictions of this account of the development of cognition: 1) A typical brain area will be used by many cognitive functions in diverse task categories, (2) evolutionarily older brain areas will be deployed in more cognitive functions, and (3) more recent cognitive functions will use more, and more widely scattered, brain areas. These findings have implications not just for our understanding of the evolutionary origins of cognitive function but also for the practice of both clinical and experimental neuroscience.
现有神经组件的创造性再利用可能在认知的进化发展中发挥了重要作用。这种重新部署具有明显的进化优势，并且此处呈现的数据证实了这种认知发展观点的三个重要实证预测：1）一个典型的脑区将被多种不同任务类别的认知功能所使用；2）进化上较古老的脑区将被部署于更多的认知功能中；3）较新的认知功能将使用更多且分布更广泛的脑区。这些发现不仅对我们理解认知功能的进化起源具有启示意义，而且对临床和实验神经科学的实践也具有启示意义。
