Evolving Our Understanding of the Brain

摘要

Where did the human brain come from? How did biological evolution, randomly generated genetic tweaks that have accumulated over millions of years, result in an organ with such sophisticated anatomical and functional complexity? In Brains Through Time, two prominent evolutionary biologists organize a massive amount of information into a compelling narrative that describes how evolution built a complex brain. The sheer breadth and depth of the knowledge in this volume would have been overwhelming for readers in the hands of authors less expert in the science, less fascinated with the story, and less deft at weaving thousands of findings from a diversity of disciplines into a coherent, multihued tapestry. But Brains Through Time delivers far beyond the promise of its understated title: it's about much more than "brains," and the time frame spans geological ages rather than mere human generations.