Human brain evolution: transcripts, metabolites and their regulators

Somel, Mehmet; Liu, Xiling; Khaitovich, Philipp

doi:10.1038/nrn3372

Cited by 203 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 200 publications

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“…As expected, these relatively unconstrained association cortices are also relatively late developing (59,63) and variable in connectivity across individuals (64). Indeed, comparative evidence indicates human-specific changes in the rate and timing of synaptogenesis, synapse elimination, and cortical myelination, resulting in increased plasticity into adulthood (65,66). That nonspecific selection for increased brain size in the human lineage might have indirectly driven increased plasticity is suggested by evidence of low heritability for cortical morphology (sulcal dimensions) vs. overall brain size in humans, a pattern that contrasts with high heritability of both in chimpanzees (67).…”

Section: An Extended Evolutionary Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 64%

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Stout

Hecht

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

134

154

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Culture suffuses all aspects of human life. It shapes our minds and bodies and has provided a cumulative inheritance of knowledge, skills, institutions, and artifacts that allows us to truly stand on the shoulders of giants. No other species approaches the extent, diversity, and complexity of human culture, but we remain unsure how this came to be. The very uniqueness of human culture is both a puzzle and a problem. It is puzzling as to why more species have not adopted this manifestly beneficial strategy and problematic because the comparative methods of evolutionary biology are ill suited to explain unique events. Here, we develop a more particularistic and mechanistic evolutionary neuroscience approach to cumulative culture, taking into account experimental, developmental, comparative, and archaeological evidence. This approach reconciles currently competing accounts of the origins of human culture and develops the concept of a uniquely human technological niche rooted in a shared primate heritage of visuomotor coordination and dexterous manipulation.brain evolution | cultural evolution | archaeology | imitation

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Section: An Extended Evolutionary Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 64%

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Stout

Hecht

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

134

154

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“…Although there is evidence for the effect of human culture on biological traits and gene frequencies (21), evidence for specific effects of human culture on learning and cognitive mechanisms is mostly circumstantial. This evidence includes signs of selection on genes implicated in brain growth, learning, and cognition (22)(23)(24) that may be attributed to human culture (21), and differences in gene expression in the brain between human and nonhuman primates (25,26) that may be interpreted similarly. There is also recent evidence relating structural changes in the human brain to Paleolithic tool-making abilities (27,28), but additional work is still needed to clarify the direction of causation between culture and cognition (we will return to discuss these findings toward the end of the paper).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations

Lotem

Halpern

Edelman

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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When humans and other animals make cultural innovations, they also change their environment, thereby imposing new selective pressures that can modify their biological traits. For example, there is evidence that dairy farming by humans favored alleles for adult lactose tolerance. Similarly, the invention of cooking possibly affected the evolution of jaw and tooth morphology. However, when it comes to cognitive traits and learning mechanisms, it is much more difficult to determine whether and how their evolution was affected by culture or by their use in cultural transmission. Here we argue that, excluding very recent cultural innovations, the assumption that culture shaped the evolution of cognition is both more parsimonious and more productive than assuming the opposite. In considering how culture shapes cognition, we suggest that a process-level model of cognitive evolution is necessary and offer such a model. The model employs relatively simple coevolving mechanisms of learning and data acquisition that jointly construct a complex network of a type previously shown to be capable of supporting a range of cognitive abilities. The evolution of cognition, and thus the effect of culture on cognitive evolution, is captured through small modifications of these coevolving learning and data-acquisition mechanisms, whose coordinated action is critical for building an effective network. We use the model to show how these mechanisms are likely to evolve in response to cultural phenomena, such as language and tool-making, which are associated with major changes in data patterns and with new computational and statistical challenges.tool-making | language evolution | niche construction | cognitive evolution | social learning A n open question in the study of culture and cognitive evolution is whether (and to what extent) cognitive mechanisms, especially those viewed as advanced or sophisticated, evolved in response to social-learning challenges or are merely the product of domain-general mechanisms (1-3). According to one view-still widely held in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology-cognitive adaptations take the form of specialized brain modules (or neuronal mechanisms) that evolved for specific, often social purposes, such as "imitation" (4, 5), "mind reading" (6, 7), "cheating detection" (8), or most famously, language acquisition (9, 10). These ideas have been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds (11,12), and the debate around them demonstrates our limited understanding of the evolution of cognition, its relationship to the evolution of social behavior and, in some organisms, culture.The question of whether culture and social behavior shape the evolution of the brain is, in our view, best considered using the evolutionary framework of niche construction (13-16): that is, culture and social behavior change the ecological niche to which cognitive traits must adapt in the same manner that nest-building by birds changes the ecological niche in which their nestlings evolve. For example, animals' ability t...

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“…Clearly, a much richer information about physiology, microstructure and function, would arise if MR measurements were to shift from 'the solvent' to the numerous small molecules that are actually involved in the biological functions. For central nervous system (CNS) studies, in particular, endogenous metabolites could report on crucial events such as neurotransmission, pH, redox states, membrane synthesis and energetic turnover 10,11 . Metabolites could also serve as early reporters for neurological disorders such as dementia, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases 12 , about the fate of malignancies 13 , and about ischaemic processes 7 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Metabolic properties in stroked rats revealed by relaxation-enhanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy at ultrahigh fields

et al. 2014

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1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) yields site-specific signatures that directly report metabolic concentrations, biochemistry and kinetics-provided spectral sensitivity and quality are sufficient. Here, an enabling relaxation-enhanced (RE) MRS approach is demonstrated that by combining highly selective spectral excitations with operation at very high magnetic fields, delivers spectra exhibiting signal-to-noise ratios 450:1 in under 6 s for B5 Â 5 Â 5 (mm) 3 voxels, with flat baselines and no interference from water. With this spectral quality, MRS was used to interrogate a number of metabolic properties in stroked rat models. Metabolic confinements imposed by randomly oriented micro-architectures were detected and found to change upon ischaemia; intensities of downfield resonances were found to be selectively altered in stroked hemispheres; and longitudinal relaxation time of lactic acid was found to increase by over 50% its control value as early as 3-h post ischaemia, paralleling the onset of cytotoxic oedema. These results demonstrate potential of 1 H MRS at ultrahigh fields.

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Human brain evolution: transcripts, metabolites and their regulators

Cited by 203 publications

References 200 publications

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations

Metabolic properties in stroked rats revealed by relaxation-enhanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy at ultrahigh fields

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