Mystery behind large size of human brain unravelled

Paris, May 25: The human brain is disproportionately large. And while abundant grey matter confers certain intellectual advantages, sustaining a big brain is costly — consuming a fifth of energy in the human body.

It is an oddity that has long flummoxed scientists: while most organisms thrive with small brains, or none at all, the human species opted to sacrifice a degree of body growth for more cerebral capacity.

The human brain, scientists say, expanded mainly in response to environmental stresses that forced our species to come up with innovative solutions for food and shelter, and pass the lessons on to our offspring.

The finding challenges a popular theory that the thinking organ grew as social interactions between humans became more complex, a research duo wrote in the Nature.

Ecological problem-solving

“The large human brain is more likely to stem from ecological problem-solving and cumulative culture than it is from social manoeuvering,” said paper co-author Mauricio Gonzalez-Forero of the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

From our ape-like Australopithecus ancestors to modern Homo sapiens, the human brain has tripled in size. But feeding such a big brain has been suggested to come at the cost of slow body growth in childhood — leaving our young dependent and vulnerable for longer than other animals.