ANTHRO 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Tetrachromacy, Neocortex, Haplorhini
9 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Humans do not have the largest absolute or relative brain, but our brain is larger than we should expect given our body size, aka encephalized. Different parts of the brain get more space if it relates to an important body part on the animal. Larger bodies have more muscles, more body area to feel, longer distances to cover, so you need a larger brain; need the extra neurons for more complex cognitive functions such as long term memory, and sensory integration. As brains get bigger, different parts get larger at different rates, evolutionary conservatism. As the brain develops, neurogenesis begins to occur along the growing neural tube. Areas that start producing neurons later grow disproportionately large as the brain grows in size. The size of different brain structures is highly predictable from total brain side a. Ex: the neocortex comes to dominate very large brains because it one of the later brain structures to be born.
