• Question: how did the human brain evolve

    Asked by hmeb to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I don’t know we know the exact answer to that but we can compare the structure of our brain with that of other animals, and also look at human behaviour and compare it with our close evolutionary relatives such as chimpanzees. There are actually very similar wiring systems in all mammalian brains-that is the bit that controls emotion in our brains does a similar role in the rat/cat/dog/monkey etc brain. The human cortex where all inputs from the outside world are processed (like from our eyes/ears etc) is more complex than other animals, which is why we have some things that are different to them like speech, reasoning…

    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      There isn’t actually that much difference in the brains of humans and animals. They all have the same basic building blocks, cell types and chemicals. They may control different functions and thats mainly a responce to our environment and what we need to survive.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Good question! There is a lot of evidence to suggest that humans evolved from Great Apes which includes chimpanzees and gorillas. Over millions of years of evolution the human brain has evolved from it’s capacity for relatively simple things like using a tool to more complex things like language production. The Great Apes brains in turn evolved from more simple mammals like ancient rodents 🙂

    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Given the similarity between humans and apes it seems clear we evolved from them but nobody really knows how human brains got so much bigger. There are theories of course, evolution would suggest that the intelligence that goes with a big brain conferred an advantage for humans having to deal with sudden ice ages, large creatures and so on, so the cleverer people with bigger brains survived and had kids with similarly big brains, but whether this is enough to explain the increase in human brain size is debated by some. There are various other theories, some highly speculative(ie without much evidence to support them) – a mutation, change in diet, God.

    • Photo: William Davies

      William Davies answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      This is one of the big questions in neuroscience, and the answer is that no-one really knows. At the moment, some big-name scientists are looking at key genes involved in brain development to see whether the human versions are different to those seen in our closest relatives, the great apes. Once we find genetic differences, we can begin to understand the mechanisms underlying the development of a larger cortex (especially frontal cortex) and complex processes such as language in humans

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