DeCasien Alex R, Barton Robert A, Higham James P
Department of Anthropology, New York University, New York, NY, USA; New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology (NYCEP), New York, NY, USA; Section on Developmental Neurogenomics, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Evolutionary Anthropology Research Group, Durham University, Durham, UK.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2022 May;26(5):432-445. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.02.003. Epub 2022 Mar 16.
Human brains are exceptionally large, support distinctive cognitive processes, and evolved by natural selection to mediate adaptive behavior. Comparative biology situates the human brain within an evolutionary context to illuminate how it has been shaped by selection and how its structure relates to evolutionary function, while identifying the developmental and molecular changes that were involved. Recent applications of powerful phylogenetic methods have uncovered new findings, some of which overturn conventional wisdom about how and why brains evolve. Here, we focus on four long-standing claims about brain evolution and discuss how new work has either contradicted these claims or shown the relevant phenomena to be more complicated than previously appreciated. Throughout, we emphasize studies of non-human primates and hominins, our close relatives and recent ancestors.
人类大脑格外庞大，支持独特的认知过程，并且通过自然选择进化而来，以调节适应性行为。比较生物学将人类大脑置于进化背景中，以阐明它是如何被选择塑造的，其结构如何与进化功能相关，同时确定其中涉及的发育和分子变化。强大的系统发育方法的最新应用揭示了新的发现，其中一些推翻了关于大脑如何以及为何进化的传统观念。在这里，我们关注关于大脑进化的四个长期观点，并讨论新的研究如何反驳了这些观点，或者表明相关现象比以前认为的更为复杂。在整个过程中，我们强调对非人类灵长类动物和古人类的研究，它们是我们的近亲以及近代祖先。
