PSYC 171 Brain Evolution

For the first 200 million years of mammalian evolution, animals’ brain sizes were relatively  predictable from their body size via a straightforward allometric relation. In the past four  million years, an evolutionary blink of the eye, primates rapidly evolved brains that are four  times larger than previously would have been predicted for their body size. What are the  contents of our brains? How do they differ from the brains of other mammals (and non mammals)? How did they acquire their enormous size? Evolution acts on genes, not on  organisms; what are the genetic factors that have been identified in recent primate brain  growth? What mechanisms are at play, including extrinsic factors and evolutionary  “pressures”? What criteria must theories of brain evolution conform to, and what data are to  be accounted for? What differential predictions arise from various theories and how are they  tested? What relationships obtain between anatomical and functional brain characteristics?

Instructor

Granger