How does evolution grow bigger brains? It has been widely assumed that growth of
individual structures and functional systems in response to niche-specific cognitive …

Brain evolution is a complex weave of species similarities and differences, bound by diverse
rules and principles. This book is a detailed examination of these principles, using data from …

We review the evidence for the concept of the “initial” or prototype brain. We outline four
possible modes of brain evolution suggested by our new findings on the evolutionary status …

Current perspectives on brain evolution relate brain size variability to two main parameters:
a scaling factor that corresponds to overall body size and an ecological factor associated …

Recent studies on neural pathways in a broad spectrum of vertebrates suggest that, in
addition to migration and an increase in the number of certain select neurons, a significant …

This target article presents a plausible evolutionary scenario for the emergence of the neural
preconditions for language in the hominid lineage. In pleistocene primate lineages there …

Evolution has generated mammalian brains that vary by a factor of over 100,000 in mass.
Despite such tremendous diversity, brain scaling in mammalian evolution has tacitly been …

How do minds emerge from developing brains? According to “neural constructivism,” the
representational features of cortex are built from the dynamic interaction between neural …

This paper presents a model for the nature and adaptive significance of intelligence and
language in early hominids based on comparative developmental, ecological, and …

In what concerns cognitive abilities, primates usually outrank other mammals of similar, or
even larger, brain size, as illustrated by comparisons between a macaque monkey and a …