Metabolic constraint imposes tradeoff between body size and number of brain neurons in human evolution
Metabolic constraint imposes tradeoff between body size and number of brain neurons in human evolution
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1206390109
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发表时间：
2012-11-06
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Herculano-Houzel, Suzana
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fonseca-Azevedo, Karina;Herculano-Houzel, Suzana
尽管大型哺乳动物有更大的大脑的普遍趋势，但人类是拥有最大大脑和神经元数量的灵长类动物，但不是最大的体重。为什么最大的灵长类动物类人猿，却没有最大的大脑呢？最近，我们发现大脑的能量消耗是其神经元数量的线性函数。在这里，我们表明，代谢的限制，可用于喂养的小时数和生食的低热量产量的结果强加了身体大小和脑神经元的数量之间的权衡，这解释了小的大脑大小的类人猿相比，他们的大身体尺寸。这种限制可能在直立人中被克服，转向熟食。如果不需要在一天中的大部分时间里进食，那么新释放的时间和大量的大脑神经元在熟食中的结合可能是人类进化中大脑大小迅速增加的主要积极驱动力。
Despite a general trend for larger mammals to have larger brains, humans are the primates with the largest brain and number of neurons, but not the largest body mass. Why are great apes, the largest primates, not also those endowed with the largest brains? Recently, we showed that the energetic cost of the brain is a linear function of its numbers of neurons. Here we show that metabolic limitations that result from the number of hours available for feeding and the low caloric yield of raw foods impose a tradeoff between body size and number of brain neurons, which explains the small brain size of great apes compared with their large body size. This limitation was probably overcome in Homo erectus with the shift to a cooked diet. Absent the requirement to spend most available hours of the day feeding, the combination of newly freed time and a large number of brain neurons affordable on a cooked diet may thus have been a major positive driving force to the rapid increased in brain size in human evolution.