The brain is the most complicated and complex organ in the human body.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — A new study shows the evolution of the human brain. The brain is the most complicated and complex organ in the human body.
The human brain is known to have decreased or shrunk in size about 3,000 years ago. Scientists use ants as a model to illustrate why brains can increase or decrease in size. The researchers hypothesize that brain shrinkage is proportional to the expansion of collective intelligence in humans.
Reported Phys, studying and understanding the causes and consequences of brain evolution helps to understand the nature of humanity. It is well documented that size the human brain has increased over the course of human evolutionary history.
However, what is not well understood is the fact that the human brain has decreased in size since the Pleistocene era. Exactly when this change occurred, or why, is so far not known with certainty.
“The surprising fact about humans today is that the human brain is smaller than the brain of our Pleistocene ancestors. Why the brain shrinks has been a great mystery to anthropologists,” said study co-author Jeremy DeSilva of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, United States (US).
To unravel the mystery, a team of researchers from various academic fields studied patterns of the evolutionary history of the human brain, comparing the findings with what is known in ants. A biological anthropologist and a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary neuroscientist began to share their thoughts on brain evolution.
“From there, we found bridging research in humans and ants, which could help identify what might be happening in nature,” explains study co-author James Traniello of Boston University.
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