The evolution of the brain began in relatively simple creatures, possibly for the purpose of coordinating digestion and other basic physiological processes. Hundreds of millions of years later, the brain evolved into the modern versions we see across the animal kingdom today. Scientists believe that humans and all other mammals evolved from fish, so by looking at the differences between human and fish brains, we can infer some of the evolutionary changes that occurred over those ~370 million years. Much of what makes our human brains unique appears to be in the cerebral cortex, though other brain structures are no doubt important in what makes us human. Finally, many of the quirks of our behavior and mental life, especially those surrounding sex and sex differences, can be explained partly by our evolutionary history.

This video is a brief exploration of brain evolution. It addresses questions like, Why did the brain evolve? How did the brain change over evolutionary time? What makes the human brain unique? And what vestiges of evolution remain hidden in our modern minds?

However, this video is ultimately incomplete. There are so many aspects of both brain and human evolution that I did not mention here or which I did not cover in detail. If you want to know more about this topic, I encourage you to check out the books, articles, and studies cited below.

Need a quick primer on how evolution works? Check out this video:    • Evolution  

Chapters:
00:00 The evolution of the brain began in creatures with simple nervous systems
01:21 Bodies evolved before brains, according to The Strange Order of Things, by Antonio Damasio
02:03 The first brains were like the enteric nervous system
02:30 Cnidarian nerve nets
03:00 Taylor Guthrie’s “Cellular Republic”
04:19 Comparing the brains of various species to human brains
05:13 Subcortical brain structures evolved before the cerebral cortex
05:44 Cortical columns in the neocortex and intelligence
06:40 Executive functions of the prefrontal cortex
07:25 David Badre on the evolution of cognitive control
09:27 The human brain is functionally holistic
09:50 Mark Humphries on the function of the cerebral cortex
11:48 Evolutionary psychology - examples of sex differences
14:18 The evolution of mental illness according to Bret Stetka
15:27 Conclusion and caveats
15:53 Thank you! Please like and subscribe!

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References:
1. Damasio, A. (2019). The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. Vintage.
2. Arendt, D., Tosches, M. & Marlow, H. From nerve net to nerve ring, nerve cord and brain — evolution of the nervous system. Nat Rev Neurosci 17, 61–72 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2015.15
3. Dawkins, R. (2004). The Ancestors Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. Houghton Mifflin.
4. Gafurov, D., & Gafurov, O. (2016). In MATEC Web of Conferences (Vol. 79, p. 01086). EDP Sciences.
5. Hawkins, J. (2021). A thousand brains: A new theory of intelligence. Basic Books.
6. Preuss, T. M., & Wise, S. P. (2022). Evolution of prefrontal cortex. Neuropsychopharmacology, 47(1), 3-19.v
7. Goetz, S. M., Weisfeld, G. Z., & Zilioli, S. (2019). Reproductive behavior in the human male. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioral Endocrinology, 125-141.
8. Clutton-Brock, T. (2007). Sexual selection in males and females. Science, 318(5858), 1882-1885.
9. Stetka, B. (2021). A History of the Human Brain: From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, how Our Brain Evolved. Timber Press.
10. Andrews, P. W., & Durisko, Z. (2017). The evolution of depressive phenotypes. The Oxford handbook of mood disorders, 24-36.

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All 3D brain animations credit: Copyright © Society for Neuroscience (2017). Users may copy images and text, but must provide attribution to the Society for Neuroscience if an image and/or text is transmitted to another party, or if an image and/or text is used or cited in User’s work.

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