Human Brain Development

Since the beginning of humankind our brains have grown over 600ml. The history of brain development studies shows that since the beginning of humanity our brains have grown double or triple the size of the prehistoric brain. Now due to environmental variables brains are believed to have shrunk back down to the same size of humans over 2 million years ago. For millions of years humans have been curious to how our brains change over time, with these modern studies we can now have a deeper understanding of these developments. If we put theses studies to use, we may create a new future for the next generation of humans. In order to use these studies we must first fully understand them, beginning with what exactly encourages the brain to adapt and

change. To understand what makes the brain change we must first know about the prehistoric human brains and how they developed into that of today.

Millions of years ago, our brains were much different than they are today.

Many of the processes and functions of the prehistoric brain are much slower and much less advanced than that of today. Part of the reason prehistoric people were much slower and had no social interaction or problem solving skills was that they had no energy in their body to put toward brain function, as they use most of their energy to survive everyday. Did you know that the human body is only made up of two percent brain but that same brain takes up twenty percent of daily energy created? Another way our brains have evolved is over time it has grown larger to compensate for better problem solving and social interaction such as conflict resolution. Determining brain developments is tricky because we can't just look back and scale out a prehistoric brain. However scientists can conclude that they were similar to the same size of the modern ape that lives on planet Earth with humans today. Brains started to show changes in the structure and shape as compared to apes. For instance, the neocortex had begun to expand, reorganizing its functions away from visual processing toward other regions of the brain. Many of the changes that the ancestral brain has gone through have also caused physical attributes to change, including size and shape, to adapt to the many cultural and social needs.Human brains today are much different from those of prehistoric times but there are many components, variables, and

environmental changes and adaptations that caused these developments that are all important to take into consideration as well.

There are many reasons that brains have developed since the beginning of humanity resulting in the brain structure we have today.

Due to climate change, the brain size has grown to communicate and work with other humans to adapt and survive better and more easily in often changing weather conditions. Another main factor that lead to brain growth over time was spreading across the globe. As the journey to migrate presented new challenges the brain adapted and grew to make social interaction and working together as well as better problem solving skills easier in order to meet these new challenges. With these new growths, the ability to walk upright was possible bringing ability to make simple tools and process small pieces of information needed for daily life. As humans were spreading across the globe many conflicts arose and those conflicts were one of the main reasons why humans were forced to evolve in order to sustain life in social

order.

Our brains have began to shrink in the last 10,000 years and due to our environment’s has began to grow once again. Our brains started to shrink because we started to have a lack of nutrition and an increase in disease. With all of the new technology that surrounds us today it has made our brains reverse and begin to grow again. Over the past 20,000 years we have noticed a decrease in the brains size of humans. The decrease is about the size of a tennis ball for both male and females. If our brains continue at this rate in the next 20,000 years are brains will be the same size of the prehistoric human. If our generation harnesses the technology that surrounds us in our daily lives then, our brains may continue to grow at a rapid rate and continue evolution. We also have to use the information of the past so we don’t repeat ourselves in our future.

The study of brain development is important to social evolution because with the knowledge it gives us we can learn how to grow for the future. If we don’t pay attention to these studies we could slip back into a generation where ours brains are similar to that of prehistoric people. This is important to know about because if we don’t started doing something about it then we may have a relapse in history. Meaning we may have the same size of brain that we did two million years ago.