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Fossil skulls reveal that blood flow rate to the brain increased faster than brain volume during human evolution.

ABSTRACT: The evolution of human cognition has been inferred from anthropological discoveries and estimates of brain size from fossil skulls. A more direct measure of cognition would be cerebral metabolic rate, which is proportional to cerebral blood flow rate (perfusion). The hominin cerebrum is supplied almost exclusively by the internal carotid arteries. The sizes of the foramina that transmitted these vessels in life can be measured in hominin fossil skulls and used to calculate cerebral perfusion rate. Perfusion in 11 species of hominin ancestors, from Australopithecus to archaic Homo sapiens, increases disproportionately when scaled against brain volume (the allometric exponent is 1.41). The high exponent indicates an increase in the metabolic intensity of cerebral tissue in later Homo species, rather than remaining constant (1.0) as expected by a linear increase in neuron number, or decreasing according to Kleiber's Law (0.75). During 3 Myr of hominin evolution, cerebral tissue perfusion increased 1.7-fold, which, when multiplied by a 3.5-fold increase in brain size, indicates a 6.0-fold increase in total cerebral blood flow rate. This is probably associated with increased interneuron connectivity, synaptic activity and cognitive function, which all ultimately depend on cerebral metabolic rate.

SUBMITTER: Seymour RS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5108958 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Correction to 'Fossil skulls reveal that blood flow rate to the brain increased faster than brain volume during human evolution'.

Project description:[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160305.].

| S-EPMC5579132 | biostudies-literature

Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Fossil Canid Mandibles and Skulls.

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Birds have peramorphic skulls, too: anatomical network analyses reveal oppositional heterochronies in avian skull evolution.

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Volume entropy for modeling information flow in a brain graph.

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3D morphometric analysis of fossil canid skulls contradicts the suggested domestication of dogs during the late Paleolithic.

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Increased cerebral blood volume and oxygen consumption in neonatal brain injury.

Project description:With the increasing interest in treatments for neonatal brain injury, bedside methods for detecting and assessing injury status and evolution are needed. We aimed to determine whether cerebral tissue oxygenation (StO(2)), cerebral blood volume (CBV), and estimates of relative cerebral oxygen consumption (rCMRO(2)) determined by bedside frequency-domain near-infrared spectroscopy (FD-NIRS) have the potential to distinguish neonates with brain injury from those with non-brain issues and healthy controls. We recruited 43 neonates < or =15 days old and >33 weeks gestational age (GA): 14 with imaging evidence of brain injury, 29 without suspicion of brain injury (4 unstable, 6 stable, and 19 healthy). A multivariate analysis of variance with Newman-Keuls post hoc comparisons confirmed group similarity for GA and age at measurement. StO(2) was significantly higher in brain injured compared with unstable neonates, but not statistically different from stable or healthy neonates. Brain-injured neonates were distinguished from all others by significant increases in CBV and rCMRO(2). In conclusion, although NIRS measures of StO(2) alone may be insensitive to evolving brain injury, increased CBV and rCMRO(2) seem to be useful for detecting neonatal brain injury and suggest increased neuronal activity and metabolism occurs acutely in evolving brain injury.

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Aberrant gene expression in Drosophila hybrids supporting faster-male evolution

Project description:To explore the aberrant expression patterns between hybrid sexes, we compare the global gene expression of 7-day-old whole body adults of hybrids by sex in recently diverged Drosophia pseudoobscura group

2013-02-02 | GSE17452 | GEO

Faster ticking rate of the epigenetic clock is associated with faster pubertal development in girls.

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