Pittella José Eymard Homem
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Medicina, Departamento de Anatomia Patológica e Medicina Legal, Belo Horizonte MG, Brazil.
Dement Neuropsychol. 2024 Apr 15;18:e20230078. doi: 10.1590/1980-5764-DN-2023-0078. eCollection 2024.
The purpose of this review is to highlight the most important aspects of the anatomical and functional uniqueness of the human brain. For this, a comparison is made between our brains and those of our closest ancestors (chimpanzees and bonobos) and human ancestors. During human evolution, several changes occurred in the brain, such as an absolute increase in brain size and number of cortical neurons, in addition to a greater degree of functional lateralization and anatomical asymmetry. Also, the cortical cytoarchitecture became more diversified and there was an increase in the number of intracortical networks and networks extending from the cerebral cortex to subcortical structures, with more neural networks being invested in multisensory and sensory-motor-affective-cognitive integration. These changes permitted more complex, flexible and versatile cognitive abilities and social behavior, such as shared intentionality and symbolic articulated language, which, in turn, made possible the formation of larger social groups and cumulative cultural evolution that are characteristic of our species.
本综述的目的是突出人类大脑在解剖学和功能上独特性的最重要方面。为此，我们将人类大脑与最亲近的祖先（黑猩猩和倭黑猩猩）以及人类祖先的大脑进行了比较。在人类进化过程中，大脑发生了若干变化，例如脑容量和皮质神经元数量的绝对增加，以及功能侧化和解剖学不对称程度的提高。此外，皮质细胞结构变得更加多样化，皮质内网络以及从大脑皮质延伸至皮质下结构的网络数量增加，更多神经网络参与多感官以及感觉运动-情感-认知整合。这些变化使得更复杂、灵活和多样的认知能力及社会行为成为可能，比如共享意向性和象征性清晰语言，进而促成了更大社会群体的形成以及我们人类特有的累积性文化进化。
