Sunday, October 7, 2012

From the Science Table of Contents

A pretty interesting news article was published last week in Science, and I wanted to briefly share it. Michael Balter wrote the article entitle "Why are our brains so big?" and points out a few theories about the evolutionary basis of the size of human brains.

Balter notes that humans have the largest brain among all species when adjusted for body weight. The "social brain hypothesis" is the most leading theory of our brain size and attributes our large brain size to a large neocortex, which is linked to sociality. Balter points out that this is likely a large contributor to our brain size, but must we must also factor in other hypotheses and possibilities. 

-Travis

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