Preface

Brain Behav Evol 2014;84:7980

DOI: 10.1159/000366460

Published online: September 20, 2014

Perspectives on Human Brain Evolution

Chet C. Sherwood
Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA

2014 S. Karger AG, Basel

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These challenges are being addressed by a community

of dedicated investigators studying human evolutionary
neuroscience. Over the last several decades, important
advances have been fueled by the accumulation of data
from a range of sources, including comparative neuroanatomy, evolutionary genomics and paleontological excavations. New opportunities now exist for integrating
these diverse datasets using techniques from informatics
and systems biology. Further progress in addressing major problems in human brain evolution therefore will be
driven by interdisciplinary and collaborative research efforts that take advantage of emerging computational
tools. This will demand that scientists from diverse backgrounds are able to communicate with one another regardless of their divergent technical expertise, theoretical
history and particular jargon. For example, the differences in cranial endocast morphology among ancient hominin species can only be deciphered in the context of the
insights offered by clinical neurology and functional neuroimaging. These lines of inquiry provide a basis for understanding the relationship between structure and function in the brain, which, in turn, can be applied to the
interpretation of fossils. Similarly, cataloging differences
in the genome between humans and other species reveals
little about the evolution of behavior and cognition without an understanding of how specific mutations encode
variation in the development of neural circuits and the
physiological activity of cells.
Chet C. Sherwood
Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University
2110 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052 (USA)
E-Mail sherwood@gwu.edu

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Human brain evolution is arguably among the most

difficult problems in biology, with many unresolved
questions. It is still largely a mystery how and why brain
size increased over the 68 million years since our lineage
split from the other great apes. It is also unclear how evolutionary changes in brain morphology and molecular biology relate to the distinctive behaviors that our species
exhibits in terms of language, abstract thinking, creativity
and insight into mental states.
The historical nature of human brain evolution requires data from fragmentary paleontological remains of
hominin ancestors, their ecological context, and archaeological evidence of cultural products such as stone tools.
These paleoanthropological data offer a window into the
selective pressures that might have shaped the brain of ancestors and relatives in our lineage over millions of years.
Unraveling the behavioral neuroscience of human brain
specializations also poses a significant challenge. While it
is relatively straightforward to document differences between humans and other primates in neuroanatomy, connectivity, cell biology and gene expression, it is much
more difficult to understand how neural variation yields
the cognitive differences that characterize our species.
Furthermore, it is complicated to sort through the tens of
millions of nucleotide base pair differences in the genome
between humans and the great apes, in order to determine
which ones have the most significance for our species
unique brain development, structure and function.

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Brain Behav Evol 2014;84:7980

DOI: 10.1159/000366460

ticular emphasis on examining differences in the growth

and development of endocranial shape. This research
draws attention to evolutionary changes of the parietal
cortex in the early stages of postnatal development in
modern humans.
Kari Hanson, Branka Hrvoj-Mihic and Katerina Semendeferi provide a comprehensive overview of the microstructural anatomy of the human cerebral cortex as
compared to other great apes. Their review integrates
findings concerning human neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Williams syndrome and autism, to shed
light on the potential functional significance of variation
in pyramidal neuron morphology and inhibitory interneuron distributions.
Finally, Richard Passingham and Jeroen Smaers revisit one of the most controversial and enduring questions in human evolutionary neuroscience is the prefrontal cortex especially enlarged? They marshal new
analyses to examine prefrontal cortex size evolution in
primates taking into account scaling against sensory and
other association cortical systems. They conclude that
the prefrontal cortex is disproportionately expanded and
therefore might endow humans with enhanced capacities for action planning and generating series of goals.
From reading these papers, one thing is for certain
the outlook for human evolutionary neuroscience is exciting. As new tools and different perspectives are integrated into the exploration of human brain evolution, we
are gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamic interactions among genes, neurons, circuits, morphology and
behavior that have resulted in our species extraordinary
cognitive capacities. Future breakthroughs will come
when evolutionary geneticists feel compelled to be
knowledgeable about the latest fossil discoveries, comparative neuroanatomists become ever more aware of
the developmental processes that shape phenotypes, and
evolutionary psychologists seek out and test the latest
findings in behavioral genetics. Ultimately, the most innovative research that will crack the problem of human
brain evolution will require collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Sherwood

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This special issue of Brain, Behavior and Evolution

represents an effort to bridge various disciplinary approaches to human brain evolution and bring them into
conversation with one another. The articles collected in
this volume stem from presentations given at the 25th
Annual Karger Workshop in Evolutionary Neuroscience, held on November 7, 2013. The goal of the workshop was to gather researchers at the vanguard of human
evolutionary neuroscience who approach the problem
from diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives.
In this issue, Christine Charvet and Barbara Finlay argue that developmental and anatomical gradients in the
brain have cascading effects that are reflected in cellular
and computational architecture, and which scale with
overall brain size. The evidence that they present urges a
view of human brain organization as the predictable outcome of highly coordinated developmental processes,
rather than a hodgepodge of individual specializations.
Jeremy Borjon and Asif Ghazanfar outline a provocative hypothesis that vocal turn taking, which is a characteristic feature of human conversations, does not require
a large and convoluted brain. They describe the dynamics of vocal exchange in a small cooperative-breeding
New World monkey species, the common marmoset,
which exhibits convergent similarities to human conversational turn taking. This challenges the notion that all
features of human language are necessarily correlated
with brain size evolution, but instead suggests that subtle
rewiring of motivational circuitry might also play a critical role.
Noriyoshi Usui, Marissa Co and Genevieve Konopka
present a valuable overview of molecular evolution underlying human language and cognition by drawing on
evidence from neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders as well as comparative genomics. They
highlight the manner in which analysis of networks of
gene expression covariance can be a powerful means of
revealing modifications in biological pathways.
Simon Neubauers contribution discusses the opportunities that fossil endocasts afford to glimpse brain evolution in extinct human ancestors and relatives, with par-