Collaborative Research: Evolutionary Origins of the Brain Energetics and Adaptive Plasticity of Humans

人类的大脑以昂贵的能量需求和增强的可塑性而闻名。这些因素的结合构成了我们人类某些最独特的认知能力的基础。大脑的学习能力在儿童时期最强，涉及新神经元连接的形成和完善。这一过程是由高能耗率驱动的。该研究项目将确定进化过程中导致人类大脑的遗传变化，并探索大脑可塑性和新陈代谢之间的因果关系。该项目的一个主要目标是绘制人类不同成熟阶段大脑能量利用的变化。为了实现这一目标，跨学科团队正在使用正电子发射断层扫描技术扫描从出生到成年阶段的大脑葡萄糖消耗。 这些结果将与RNA和蛋白质数据所呈现的模式相结合，这些数据涉及数千种基因，这些基因在相同发育阶段的不同大脑区域中以不同的水平表达。 还获得了类人猿和猕猴蛋白质发育表达和神经元形态的比较数据，以确定人类大脑发育中分子和细胞变化的进展是否与我们的近亲有明显不同。 研究人员希望在大脑能量和大脑可塑性基因中找到协调的表达模式，这表明在人类起源期间，它们的调节机制发生了适应性进化。 这些结果应该提供有关分子机制的组织和功能的重要线索，这些分子机制是人类大脑可塑性的基础，赋予我们物种将经验和学习融入文化生产的特殊能力。 通过将注意力集中在大脑活力和大脑可塑性基因上，这些基因在最近的人类祖先中显示出适应性进化，但目前在人类群体中是固定的，该项目对定义人类认知能力的共享基因的关注加强了共同人性的结论。 因此，这个项目的结果应该是感兴趣的一般公众和科学家在各种学科，包括人类学，神经科学，分子进化，生物能量学，内分泌学和儿科学。 对生长过程中大脑总能量的实验测定将增强我们理解人类进化史中获得更大大脑所需的年龄特异性权衡的能力，同时也为理解糖尿病等代谢疾病提供了新的背景。 此外，该项目还将通过为本科生、研究生和博士后提供培训机会，促进研究和教育。

The human brain is distinguished by costly energetic demands and enhanced plasticity. This combination of factors underlies some of the most unique cognitive capacities of our species. The brain's capacity for learning is greatest during childhood and involves the formation and refinement of new neuronal connections. This process is driven by high rates of energy consumption. This research project will identify the genetic changes during evolution that brought about the human brain and explore the causal link between the development of brain plasticity and metabolism. A major aim of this project involves charting the changes in the brain's energy utilization during the different maturational stages of humans. To accomplish this goal, the interdisciplinary team is using positron emission tomography scans of brain glucose consumption over the course of development from birth to adult stages. These results will be integrated with the patterns presented by RNA and protein data on the thousands of genes that are expressed at changing levels in different brain regions across the same developmental stages. Comparative data on the developmental expression of proteins and neuron morphology in great apes and macaque monkeys are also being obtained to determine whether the progression of molecular and cellular changes in human brain development are distinctively different from our close relatives. The investigators expect to find coordinated expression patterns in brain energetic and brain plasticity genes showing evidence that adaptive evolution occurred in their regulatory machinery during the origin of humans. The results should provide important clues about the organization and function of the molecular machinery that underpins the type of human brain plasticity that gives our species its exceptional capacity to incorporate experience and learning into the production of culture. By focusing attention on brain energetic and brain plasticity genes that show adaptive evolution during recent human ancestry but are currently fixed across human populations, this project's focus on shared genes that define human cognitive abilities reinforces the conclusion of a common humanity. Thus the results of this project should be of interest to the general public and to scientists across a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, molecular evolution, bioenergetics, endocrinology and pediatrics. Experimental determination of total brain energetics during growth will enhance our ability to understand the age-specific tradeoffs that the acquisition of larger brains would have required during human evolutionary history, while also providing a new context in which to understand metabolic diseases such as diabetes. Furthermore, this project will advance research and education by providing training opportunities for individuals at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels.