#487 Suzana Herculano-Houzel: The Evolution of the Human Brain, and Darwin's Descent of Man
RECORDED ON MARCH 25th 2021.
Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel is Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director for Communications at Vanderbilt Brain Institute at Vanderbilt University. She is interested in comparative neuroanatomy, cellular composition of brains, brain morphology, brain evolution, metabolic cost of body and brain, sleep requirement across species, feeding time, and really interested in how all of these are tied together. She writes about neuroscience and science in general for the public. She is the author of The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable (MIT Press, 2016).
In this episode, we focus on The Human Advantage, and also on a chapter of the edited book, A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution. We debunk many myths about the human brain, focusing on things like its size, its number of cells, its organization, its metabolic cost, its functions, and how we compare to other species. We also make reference to some of the ideas Darwin exposed on The Descent of Man, and what he got right and wrong.
This interview is part of a short series I am doing on the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Descent of Man.
Time Links:
Intro
How the brain evolved
Are we a typical primate?
Do we have an unusual number of neurons?
Diet and the human brain
Do we really have 100 billion neurons?
Is there any correlation between brain and cognitive capabilities?
Are brain cells the same across species?
The brains of our hominin ancestors
Are we special in any way?
What did Darwin get right and wrong?
Follow Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s work!
Follow Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3aindHM
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3cgQAN0
TED: https://bit.ly/2PwrNeI
The Human Advantage: https://amzn.to/39qyrLh
A Most Interesting Problem: https://amzn.to/3rlLELU
Twitter handle: @suzanahh