ArticleNature2011
Energetics and the evolution of human brain size.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 149 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
149 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Is intracranial volume a suitable proxy for brain reserve?Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2018Pooled it
- Primate energy input and the evolutionary transition to energy-dense diets in humans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Pooled it
- Energy Constraints and Ecological Adaptation Drive Divergent Evolution of Sensory and Cognitive Brain Regions in Bats.Integrative zoology · 2026Article
- Elevational Variation in Organ Size and Brain-Viscera Energetic Trade-Offs in the Minshan Toad (Biology · 2026Article
- Computational simulation of cranial soft tissue expansion on the cranium during early postnatal growth in humans.Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Hemispheric disparity theory: a dual-system framework for consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires?American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Review
- Complex and diverse patterns of neurocranial development in Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Environmental adversity, life-history traits and cognitive functioning in children and adolescents.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Social fish have larger brains and greater relative telencephalon sizes: support for the social brain hypothesis from wild, intraspecific comparisons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Elucidating reaction dynamics in a model of human brain energy metabolism.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Cooperative Breeding as a Likely Early Catalyst of Human Evolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Proximate mechanisms underlying the coevolution of diet quality and relative brain size in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Efficient numerosity estimation under limited time.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Evolution of Plasticity in Brain Morphology.Brain, behavior and evolution · 2025Review
- Hominin brain size increase has emerged from within-species encephalization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The primate gut microbiota contributes to interspecific differences in host metabolism.Microbial genomics · 2024Article
- Metabolic scaling, energy allocation tradeoffs, and the evolution of humans' unique metabolism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Review
- The human side of biodiversity: coevolution of the human niche, palaeo-synanthropy and ecosystem complexity in the deep human past.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
89 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The human brain stands out among mammals by being unusually large. The expensive-tissue hypothesis explains its evolution by proposing a trade-off between the size of the brain and that of the digestive tract, which is smaller than expected for a primate of our body size. Although this hypothesis is widely accepted, empirical support so far has been equivocal. Here we test it in a sample of 100 mammalian species, including 23 primates, by analysing brain size and organ mass data. We found that, controlling for fat-free body mass, brain size is not negatively correlated with the mass of the digestive tract or any other expensive organ, thus refuting the expensive-tissue hypothesis. Nonetheless, consistent with the existence of energy trade-offs with brain size, we find that the size of brains and adipose depots are negatively correlated in mammals, indicating that encephalization and fat storage are compensatory strategies to buffer against starvation. However, these two strategies can be combined if fat storage does not unduly hamper locomotor efficiency. We propose that human encephalization was made possible by a combination of stabilization of energy inputs and a redirection of energy from locomotion, growth and reproduction.
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22080949What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.