I'm reading a book about human evolution ( Last Ape Standing by Chip Walter ) and i just read something interesting :
"While a chimps brain is about 350 cc, these grassland primates™ brains ran from 450 cc to 500 cc, a 25 to 40 percent increase.
The big question is why. The traditional scientific answer to this question is that a bigger brain is a better brain, so evolutions forces tended to favor smarter animals. That is true enough, but it still doesnt explain the mechanism that was causing the growth. What was forcing the issue? Why were larger brains evolving at all? Strange as it may seem, starvation might be the answer.
Numerous studies show that reducing the normal diets of creatures as different as fruit flies, mice, rats, and dogs by 35 to 40 percent will increase life span as much as 30 percent.
Cell growth on every level slows except for one key and remarkable exception: brain cell growth increases.
There the cells last longer, and they begin to make new versions of themselves faster, or at least the neurotrophins generated by the hypothalamus, which are the precursors of new brain cells, do. Not only that, other experiments show that food deprivation increases an appetiteâ stimulating peptide called ghrelin, which enables synapses to transform themselves by some molecular magic into cortical neurons.
You could say the body and the brain strike a bargain. To compensate for the aggressive growth of new neurons, the rest of the anatomy fasts, stretching scarce nutritional resources that it then redirects to the brain. "
I never heard of this before, what do you think ?
"While a chimps brain is about 350 cc, these grassland primates™ brains ran from 450 cc to 500 cc, a 25 to 40 percent increase.
The big question is why. The traditional scientific answer to this question is that a bigger brain is a better brain, so evolutions forces tended to favor smarter animals. That is true enough, but it still doesnt explain the mechanism that was causing the growth. What was forcing the issue? Why were larger brains evolving at all? Strange as it may seem, starvation might be the answer.
Numerous studies show that reducing the normal diets of creatures as different as fruit flies, mice, rats, and dogs by 35 to 40 percent will increase life span as much as 30 percent.
Cell growth on every level slows except for one key and remarkable exception: brain cell growth increases.
There the cells last longer, and they begin to make new versions of themselves faster, or at least the neurotrophins generated by the hypothalamus, which are the precursors of new brain cells, do. Not only that, other experiments show that food deprivation increases an appetiteâ stimulating peptide called ghrelin, which enables synapses to transform themselves by some molecular magic into cortical neurons.
You could say the body and the brain strike a bargain. To compensate for the aggressive growth of new neurons, the rest of the anatomy fasts, stretching scarce nutritional resources that it then redirects to the brain. "
I never heard of this before, what do you think ?
“ Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell "
That, for all they care, I can go to hell "
