Section of Developmental Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Croatian Institute for Brain Research, University of Zagreb School of Medicine Zagreb, Croatia.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Aug 2;7:423. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00423. eCollection 2013.
The human life-history is characterized by long development and introduction of new developmental stages, such as childhood and adolescence. The developing brain had important role in these life-history changes because it is expensive tissue which uses up to 80% of resting metabolic rate (RMR) in the newborn and continues to use almost 50% of it during the first 5 postnatal years. Our hominid ancestors managed to lift-up metabolic constraints to increase in brain size by several interrelated ecological, behavioral and social adaptations, such as dietary change, invention of cooking, creation of family-bonded reproductive units, and life-history changes. This opened new vistas for the developing brain, because it became possible to metabolically support transient patterns of brain organization as well as developmental brain plasticity for much longer period and with much greater number of neurons and connectivity combinations in comparison to apes. This included the shaping of cortical connections through the interaction with infant's social environment, which probably enhanced typically human evolution of language, cognition and self-awareness. In this review, we propose that the transient subplate zone and its postnatal remnant (interstitial neurons of the gyral white matter) probably served as the main playground for evolution of these developmental shifts, and describe various features that makes human subplate uniquely positioned to have such a role in comparison with other primates.
人类的生命周期以漫长的发育和新发育阶段的引入为特征，如儿童期和青春期。发育中的大脑在这些生命史变化中起着重要作用，因为它是一种昂贵的组织，在新生儿中消耗了 80%的静息代谢率（RMR），在出生后的头 5 年中仍继续消耗近 50%的 RMR。我们的原始人类祖先通过几种相互关联的生态、行为和社会适应，成功地克服了代谢限制，增加了大脑的大小，这些适应包括饮食变化、烹饪的发明、以家庭为纽带的生殖单位的创造，以及生命史的变化。这为发育中的大脑开辟了新的视野，因为它有可能在更长的时间内、通过更多的神经元和连接组合来代谢支持短暂的大脑组织模式和发育中的大脑可塑性，与类人猿相比，这是可能的。这包括通过与婴儿的社会环境相互作用来塑造皮质连接，这可能增强了人类语言、认知和自我意识的典型进化。在这篇综述中，我们提出，短暂的基板区及其产后残留物（脑回白质的间质神经元）可能是这些发育转变进化的主要场所，并描述了各种特征，使人类基板区在与其他灵长类动物相比时，具有这样的作用。
