Suzana Herculano-Houzel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262034258
- eISBN:
- 9780262333214
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034258.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience
Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies, use 25% of all the energy the body requires each day, and became enormous in hardly any ...
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Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies, use 25% of all the energy the body requires each day, and became enormous in hardly any time in evolution, leaving our cousins, the great apes, behind. So the human brain is special, right? Wrong: according to the evidence uncovered by the author, humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals because we have a brain built in the image of other primate brains that managed to gather the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex due to a technological innovation that allowed a larger caloric intake in less time: cooking.Less
Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies, use 25% of all the energy the body requires each day, and became enormous in hardly any time in evolution, leaving our cousins, the great apes, behind. So the human brain is special, right? Wrong: according to the evidence uncovered by the author, humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals because we have a brain built in the image of other primate brains that managed to gather the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex due to a technological innovation that allowed a larger caloric intake in less time: cooking.
