ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2013
Linking brains and brawn: exercise and the evolution of human neurobiology.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
- Why Do Humans Exercise? A Neuro-Evolutionary Framework for Discretionary Physical Effort.Evolutionary anthropology · 2026Review
- Therapeutic potential of myokines and myometabolites for brain ageing and neurodegeneration.Nature reviews. Endocrinology · 2026Article
- Cognitive correlates of human endurance.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Exercise Delays Brain Ageing Through Muscle-Brain Crosstalk.Cell proliferation · 2025Review
- The Impact of Physical Activity on Childhood and Adolescent Cognitive Growth and its Link to Obesity.Journal of pharmacy & bioallied sciences · 2025Article
- The interplay between physical exercise and autophagy signaling in brain health, neurodegenerative diseases and aging.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Review
- Effects of Physical Activity on Cognition, Behavior, and Motor Skills in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Article
- Unlocking the Therapeutic Potential of Irisin: Harnessing Its Function in Degenerative Disorders and Tissue Regeneration.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- The role of microglia in neuropsychiatric disorders and suicide.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2022Review
- Getting Fit to Counteract Cognitive Aging: Evidence and Future Directions.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2022Review
- Muscle-to-Brain Signaling Via Myokines and Myometabolites.Brain plasticity (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2022Review
- The Lifestyle Psychiatry project of the WPA Section on Medicine, Psychiatry and Primary Care.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2021Article
- Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis and Affective Disorders: New Neurons for Psychic Well-Being.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Review
- Effects of Physical Exercise on Autophagy and Apoptosis in Aged Brain: Human and Animal Studies.Frontiers in nutrition · 2020Review
- Exercise enhances the effectiveness of vitamin D therapy in rats with Alzheimer's disease: emphasis on oxidative stress and inflammation.Metabolic brain disease · 2020Article
- Physical Activity and Brain Health.Genes · 2019Review
- The exercise-cognition relationship: A virtuous circle.Journal of sport and health science · 2019Review
- The beneficial effects of physical exercise in the brain and related pathophysiological mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases.Laboratory investigation; a journal of technical methods and pathology · 2019Review
- Oxygen, evolution and redox signalling in the human brain; quantum in the quotidian.The Journal of physiology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The hunting and gathering lifestyle adopted by human ancestors around 2 Ma required a large increase in aerobic activity. High levels of physical activity altered the shape of the human body, enabling access to new food resources (e.g. animal protein) in a changing environment. Recent experimental work provides strong evidence that both acute bouts of exercise and long-term exercise training increase the size of brain components and improve cognitive performance in humans and other taxa. However, to date, researchers have not explored the possibility that the increases in aerobic capacity and physical activity that occurred during human evolution directly influenced the human brain. Here, we hypothesize that proximate mechanisms linking physical activity and neurobiology in living species may help to explain changes in brain size and cognitive function during human evolution. We review evidence that selection acting on endurance increased baseline neurotrophin and growth factor signalling (compounds responsible for both brain growth and for metabolic regulation during exercise) in some mammals, which in turn led to increased overall brain growth and development. This hypothesis suggests that a significant portion of human neurobiology evolved due to selection acting on features unrelated to cognitive performance.
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What 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.