The brain is the head of everything
Scientists have recognized brain growth as the main engine of human evolution
Unusual experiments on the "suffocation" of the body have shown that the body primarily provides energy and oxygen to the nervous system, and only then takes care of the muscles, which indicates the special importance of the brain in the evolution of humans, scientists say in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.
"We found out that under extreme physical and mental stress, the body gives priority to the brain, not the body. Apparently, a fully "charged" brain helped our ancestors navigate dangerous situations better and save their lives more often than fresh muscles," says Daniel Longman from the University of Cambridge (in a press release 'Selfish brain' wins out when competing with muscle power, study finds – VM).
Most scientists today believe that the evolution of man in the last 2-3 million years was controlled, in fact, by one factor – an increase in the size and complexity of our brain. All other changes in the anatomy and vital activity of our ancestors, according to anthropologists, were due to the need to maintain the growing appetites of the nervous system.
For example, today scientists believe that a person learned to cook and process food about 1-2 million years ago for one simple reason – our ancestors would have had to search and eat food for about 10-11 hours a day to provide their brain with the necessary amount of calories. Similarly, a further increase in the appetites of the brain could accelerate human metabolism, forcing our body to consume energy faster and teaching it to store it in fat deposits, usually absent in other primates.
Longman and his colleagues found another confirmation in favor of this hypothesis by organizing an extremely unusual experiment, the participants of which agreed to simultaneously participate in two competitions – in rowing and in the game of ingenuity.
This experiment was based on a simple assumption – with a total lack of nutrients and oxygen, our body will provide them primarily to the most important organs, and the rest of the body will be supplied by the residual principle. Accordingly, if the brain plays a special role in a person's life, then solving intellectual tasks during sports will interfere with the work of muscles.
Guided by this idea, the scientists observed how the athletic success of students changed, who had to not only do rowing on simulators, but also answer various tricky questions that tested their memory and intelligence.
As it turned out, the need to solve two tasks at once dramatically reduced the amount of energy that the muscles received – they lost about 13% of energy, about 40 watts, at a time when students had to simultaneously engage in both mental and physical labor.
At the same time, most importantly, the proportion of correct answers that students gave in a calm atmosphere and during the performance of such exercises differed markedly less, by about 10%. This suggests that the body gave priority to supplying the brain with nutrients and oxygen, sacrificing optimal muscle performance.
Reduction in the number of correct answers and muscle energy expenditure
(from an article in Scientific Reports) – VM.
The presence of such priorities in the work of the body, according to scientists, is a confirmation of generally accepted ideas about human evolution and what role the development of the brain played in it.
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