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The size of the brain is a frequent topic of study within the fields of anatomy, biological anthropology, animal science and evolution.Measuring brain size and cranial capacity is relevant both to humans and other animals, and can be done by weight or volume via MRI scans, by skull volume, or by neuroimaging intelligence testing.
The sequence of human evolution from Australopithecus (four million years ago) to Homo sapiens (modern humans) was marked by a steady increase in brain size. [264] [265] As brain size increased, this altered the size and shape of the skull, [266] from about 600 cm 3 in Homo habilis to an average of about 1520 cm 3 in Homo neanderthalensis. [267]
The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule of thumb, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have proportionally larger brains, measured as a fraction of body size.
Brain size usually increases with body size in animals (i.e. large animals usually have larger brains than smaller animals); [4] the relationship is not, however, linear. Small mammals such as mice may have a brain/body ratio similar to humans, while elephants have a comparatively lower brain/body ratio. [4] [5]
Dunbar's number has become of interest in anthropology, evolutionary psychology, [12] statistics, and business management.For example, developers of social software are interested in it, as they need to know the size of social networks their software needs to take into account; and in the modern military, operational psychologists seek such data to support or refute policies related to ...
[20] [21] Per Cernovsky, people from different climates tend to have minor differences in brain size, but these do not necessarily imply differences in intelligence; for instance, though women tend to have smaller brains than men they also have more neural complexity and loading in certain areas of the brain than men. [22] [23]
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The evolutionary history of the human brain shows primarily a gradually bigger brain relative to body size during the evolutionary path from early primates to hominins and finally to Homo sapiens. This trend that has led to the present day human brain size indicates that there has been a 2-3 factor increase in size over the past 3 million years ...