The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history.

ABSTRACT: In the last few million years, the hominin brain more than tripled in size. Comparisons across evolutionary lineages suggest that this expansion may be part of a broader trend toward larger, more complex brains in many taxa. Efforts to understand the evolutionary forces driving brain expansion have focused on climatic, ecological, and social factors. Here, building on existing research on learning, we analytically and computationally model the predictions of two closely related hypotheses: The Cultural Brain Hypothesis and the Cumulative Cultural Brain Hypothesis. The Cultural Brain Hypothesis posits that brains have been selected for their ability to store and manage information, acquired through asocial or social learning. The model of the Cultural Brain Hypothesis reveals relationships

SUBMITTER: Muthukrishna M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6224031 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature