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Researchers Say Dark Winters Led To Bigger Human Brains
Brad1138 writes "Humans living at high latitude have bigger eyes and bigger brains to cope with poor light during long winters and cloudy days, UK scientists have said. from the article: 'The scientists measured the eye sockets and brain volumes of 55 skulls from 12 populations across the world, and plotted the results against latitude. Lead author Eiluned Pearce told BBC News: "We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude and both eye socket size and cranial capacity."'"
Yah know, if we keep finding variations, we're gonna have to take another look at our "primate ancestors".
I wonder what the relevence is in regards to intelligence.
So Santa Claus has the biggest brain of all ?
RTFA "The Oxford University team said bigger brains did not make people smarter. Larger vision processing areas fill the extra capacity, they write in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal."
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
have bigger eyes and bigger brains to cope with poor light during long winters and cloudy days,
So the decedents of Slashdotters could develop larger eyes and brains? Hmm.
now there is a quality sample size that you can draw quality conclusions from. That is some experimental rigor to be proud of!
I don't need large brains to have a good time!
I wonder what the relevence is in regards to intelligence.
There's a constant mixing of populations as the people in colder climes develop bigger brains, giving them the intelligence to reason "fuck, it's cold here" and move somewhere warmer, displacing existing populations who are forced to move further from the equator and thus develop bigger brains...
Highest absolute latitudes. Meaning the farthest away from the equator in either direction.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
How do they know a) that it's entirely vision processing that takes the extra space (the idea of there being specialized areas of the brain is coming into disrepute, I understand) and b) that that has no effect on intelligence?
Reality is not racist; it simply is.
-I only code in BASIC.-
If this had happened about 75 years ago, it would have been explicitly racist. Everybody believed in eugenics before the Nazis discredited it.
Where's the raw data? I'd be willing to bet the variation within each group is comparable to the claimed inter-group variation.
I have a gut feeling that they should be compared as well.
Your comment just suggests you didn't bother to RTFA.
"In the paper, we argue that having bigger brains doesn't mean that high-latitude humans are necessarily smarter. It's just they need bigger eyes and brains to be able to see well where they live."
They're saying that the extra cranial capacity is being used by the visual processing centres of the brain.
And to be honest, your comment isn't combating racism, it's reinforcing it.
I stole this Sig
Eskimos live up there too.
Cold didn't have to *lead* to anything. Using the word "Led" in the title is misleading because it suggests a causal link. For all we know, having bigger brains made people leave hotter areas because they felt uncomfortable (I know I feel REALLY bad when it's hot, and I have a HUGE brain) or were more adventurous and sought to live in new areas.
. . . the Morlocks. They may be ugly anthropophages, but I figured they'd have to be smarter than the Eloi, and got to play with ancient machinery to boot.
It must be quite a trick, estimating how those larger brains must have been structured, considering they're ... entirely decayed by now. Their paper http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/07/12/rsbl.2011.0570.full doesn't appear to substantiate it either. Where exactly did the BBC get that quote?
But they just said it was due to sports.
So, which is it?
displacing existing populations who are forced to move further from the equator and thus develop bigger brains
farther.
get packing.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
It doesn't say smarter. In much the same way you need bigger muscles to lift a heavier object, you need a larger visual processing center in your brain to make sense of darker images, to extract detail from lower contrast situations, and low light conditions. I would assume, also, that it's an environmental adaptation; that is to say, anyone of any race, of any socioeconomic background, regardless of the intelligence or home-latitude of their most recent dozen ancestors, would experience the same boost in brain size, purely for processing visual information.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
What an awful racist thing to say. Those of us with larger brains can clearly understand the implications of this, and it is pure racist. It must not be said. It doesn't matter that it is completely true.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This coming from the UK which is perpetually under cloud cover...
Best guess, they're likely taking existing brains (in today's humans) and scaling down to fir the skulls. Given that you can reconstruct *most* of the outer shape from the cranial cavity, it's not a bad initial assumption to make.
OTOH, while it's not too awful likely that a given 'duty' of a set of brain cells shifts all that radically, I do agree with you to an extent.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
No, they are not saying what you say they are saying. As to bigger being smarter, "[not] necessarily" is not the same as "not".
Hops grow better in areas with short winter days and long summer days.
The lesson here is that the lord giveth and the lord taketh away.
... by peer review. Conclusion is remarkably reminiscent of "scientific" bases for racist conclusions so prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th century social sciences.
"Winter is coming" could really be a good news?
DindinX
The mundane realities of American politics?
Furthermore, wouldn't you expect them to precisely have better visual intelligence because of it? Like... the purpose of the brain matter filling the region? I find it hard to believe that mass does nothing.
People who live in hot climates have larger sinuses, and vice-versa, due to body heat regulation. Different people are different, period. Do we have to keep saying that everyone's the same because if they aren't then it's automatically offensive? If we're different, then we have to find out who's "better"?
This discussion is so old, and it skews science. It's the same with genders -- are we allowed to say that men and women have different thought patterns yet, or do we have to whisper? This PC bullshit always pisses me off.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Not really, I remember a study out a while back dealing with sweat glands that found a sort of inverse relation ship that those from closer to the equator had more sweat glands than those from further up north.
It could be racist, but more likely it's either an honest mistake or a reflection of reality. Adding racism here without any real cause is in and of itself racist.
Any advantage in brain and eyesight for us high latitude dwellers would be negated by our propensity for alcoholism.
smarter. I think the evidence would support that gene diversity is the best way to ensure survival. *cough* says the man from Ireland *cough*
Probably the cold weather just led to a lot more cuddling. And, naturally the cuddling led to a lot more - you know - whoopee.
So, apparently sex is good for your brain.
sig not found
TFA is all wrong! People near the equator have the smaller next generation iBrains with better eye sockets that aren't available yet in the northern markets.
Then again
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Hmm, I think it's accurate to say their position is that the brains are bigger, but this is explained by the larger vision processing centres (I didn't read the paper but I assume they checked that the increased volume was in these areas), and thus isn't evidence of increased intelligence overall.
I assume the original poster was thinking bigger -> smarter, therefore smarter -> racist scientists. Even if the scientists are incorrect in assuming this means no increase in intelligence it's certainly demonstrates there was no racist motive on the part of the scientists.
ps. Going by your nick I know you in real life, though I don't really associate this nick with my name so you may not be able to make the reverse connection (hints: several years ago, volleyball, curling).
I stole this Sig
the idea of there being specialized areas of the brain is coming into disrepute,
No. There clearly are areas of specialized cortex, the visual cortex being one. That doesn't mean that other parts of the brain aren't involved in visual processing (for example). The trivial example of this is the homunculus. If you damage a particular area in the motor or sensory cortex, you will see the effects of that damage in very specific regions of the body.
Size of a particular region isn't necessarily correlated with the level or degree of function and lots of other things happen in various regions of the brain.[Long complex discussion on how the brain works. Lots of handwaving.]
I'm not sure where you picked up that concept, but it's not correct, unless I'm not understanding what you meant to say.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Eskimos, living in a region with one of the longest, darkest winters, should therefore have enormous eyes and humongous brains. So much for positive correlation.
This should prove interesting for those with this mutation who end up being blind. As we know the parts of the brain that loses its stimuli is basically re-purposed for another task and if there is more of this matter to be re-purposed then it should be rather interesting.
"I assume they checked that the increased volume was in these areas"
I didn't see discussion of that in the paper, FWIW. They filled empty skulls with plastic/wax pellets to measure this and that. No brains - no brain studies.
"it certainly demonstrates there was no racist motive on the part of the scientists."
Yeah; it'd be a politically-correct accusation, and it sounds like the BBC and/or the scientists are trying to preempt that.
"I know you in real life"
Heh, I don't even know myself in real life.
Hi, Ph.D. in Neurosciences here. No, that is not in disrepute.
...is to confirm the theory by searching for fossil chibis in Antarctica.
Find free books.
TFA was down when I was trying to read.
You're pretty close to the target with that. I read this article earlier today, before it hit slashdot. In effect, they measured the skulls of people who have been dead for 200 years. They did NOT measure the brains, the lobes of the brain, or anything to do with the brain, other than skull capacity. Skull capacity may be an indicator of anything, or nothing.
Now, if they had evaluated brains, they may or may not have arrived at meaningful conclusions. Corpses aren't a rare commodity, after all. Fresh corpses are created every day.
Making an assumption that extra brain mass is required for good vision in poor lighting totally ignores the fact that almost all cats, as well as a number of other animals, have excellent night vision, but have brain masses that are a fraction of our own.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
is that why slashdot users is more technically inclined? after all, it's usually cold and dark in mom's basement...
Does their study take into account the recent observation that us northern people are more likely to have Neanderthal DNA and that that could at least be part of the reason for larger brains?
To play devil's advocate, I hereby dispute this.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Just kidding, sorry, forgot my sarcasm flag. Retina is a good example of a specialized brain region.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
I, for one, would like to welcome our super intelligent Eskimo overlords! (And troglodytes and blind people and habitual sunglass wearers and squinty eyed folk).
I think he may at least in part be referring to things like language processing. People used to point at Broca's area, draw some arrows to Wernicke's area and there ya go, here's yer language bits. Only now we know that's not really true and that language processing seems to involve, for instance, sensorimotor areas of the brain too.
So while you're certainly correct when it comes to sensorimotor areas but he has a point when we're talking about higher-level cognition.
Isn't the contorted facts that you drool; its that you drool them. Racist is a convenient short hand for stupid, ignorant and mainly afraid.
It may be no more your fault than if you were born blind. Like the blind, there is a lot you can do to overcome your disability. The blind can because they have motivation and courage. Courage is a very big part of overcoming your limitations.
Peer groups can help with motivation and support. That is what has made AA the success it is, and there are a wide range of peer support groups available. But, as a first step, you seek them out. Motivation is important; and life really is a lot better if you aren't hampered by being stupid, ignorant and afraid. Good Luck.
We'd have a lot of posters using flippers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yup. Blizzard North... you know what I mean, or perhaps I should say "you see what I mean", if you are from the land of long nights.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.
This research would imply that the further south you live in the US the less intelligent you were. So I did a quick Google search for "dumb american southerners"... turns out there is strong anecdotal evidence! Where's my research grant.
Could be. It's obviously very, very complicated. And you're correct - the specific areas of motor cortex (again, for example) are necessary but not entirely sufficient for complex motor skills.
We're getting there in determining how the brain is wired. Whether any one human can actually understand it is certainly up for debate.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So you are saying that people who have larger sinuses will move to hot climates to live there?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Bigger eyes for lower light at northern latitudes? OK. But bigger brains because of lower light during winter? I don't buy it. However there's a theory that we lost our body hair because it allowed us to keep shed excess heat more easily, which allowed us to grow larger brains than our hirsute ape cousins because big brains generate a lot of heat. So it's more likely that humans at northern latitude had bigger brains because, just as with the evolution of naked skin, the cooler weather made it easier to keep bigger brains cool, and therefore made them an evolutionary advantage (due to more analytical/processing power and memory) instead of an evolutionary disadvantage (by requiring less activity to stay within a safe body temperature range).
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
It's natural selection that's racist. The nerve of giving white people bigger brains!
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
A lot of reactions here and in the press have been that this is somehow racist. But the size of a brain has very little to do with intelligence. Whales got huge ones but they ain't got a IQ in the thousands.
I got a large head, not a water head, it is actual brain inside (only largest helment size fits me and then only some brands, most cheap helmets don't even go to my size). Am I super smart then with my big brain? Am I bollocks. Yes I got an above average IQ, who hasn't. (About half the population you say? How do you figure that out with your small brain).
It is generally assumed that it is the complexity of the brain that allows it to do complex thing and that large brains are simply there to allow the processing of a lot of input (a larger animal has more skin), control more body (octopuses got a very complex brain setup just to handle their arms) or indeed process complex visual input. The brain ain't just for thinking, it is for handling the body, its input and output. Lots of animals got relatively big brains because they need to do complex things but that doesn't make them intelligent.
In fact, if a human being evolved to be able to fly it would be more stupid because its brain would need to allocate more of its capability to flying instead of thinking. Add being able to see better (we got pretty lousy eyes) or even smell (we can't smell shit) and pretty soon we would have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time.
Anyway, if you want to imply big brain == intelligence then you are not just going to have to worry about racism. Women got far smaller heads in general. I know plenty of women (alright, my mom) who drown in my hat. For that matter my cat sleeps in my helmet but guess who cleans up its poop?
There might very well be a intelligence difference between various races and genders. The racists would love this but forget about the HUGE spread in intelligence that occurs just between local populations or even families. So someone from a race that has a few IQ points less on average might still as an individual whoop your butt. Wasn't one of the tallest guys in basketball at one point a japanese kid? I been to japan, they are short. I live in Holland, we are tall (not me, I am not a northerner, despite my big brain). Averages say nothing about the individual. On average humans got sex... well slashdot?
The study is harmless and might be true but you just know some people are going to use this for evil. Proving that they might got big brains but very small minds in the process.
What if, like me, early men of northern latitudes were just attracted to doe-eyed girls with big brains?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Cats have a different eye structure geared toward night vision, while humans do not. Extra brain mass might be required for better night vision given the same basic eye design.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Yes, we're all different, but we're all equal. You are confusing the argument. Of course we can say that men and women have different thought patterns - it's only when you say one is outright-better than the other that things get dicey. Political correctness is all about accuracy of statement. You can make any statement you want, just be accurate about it. Your conflation of "same" and "equal" is a great example of why you could benefit from understanding what PC is, and why PC is necessary to help folks like you understand the difference. Folks who claim political correctness is bad either don't understand the concept, or don't understand other concepts they discuss in public, which are subsequently highlighted as being un-PC. Whenever you read "politically correct", replace it with "accurate", or even just "correct". Then, maybe, you'll understand it as a notion, and see just how useful it is.
I am sick and tired of this kind of "research" that late Richard Feynman used to call "cargo cult science". Surviving in the North generally required more cognitive processing due to variety of factors like cold temperatures (one needs to invent cloth), scarcity of food (better hunting techniques, advanced social skills). Less light might affect eye sight but I think it is a minor factor when it comes to brain size. To summarize, living in the North did affect brain size and cognitive development but it is all but impossible to attribute that to the amount of light. There are other more important factors at play here.
that shit didn't help Ned Stark
...they have more time to spend on learning about frivolous stuff like numerical sequences and funny shapes.
This stuff is not frivolous - it is the next logical step. One you have shelter, dinner and warmth you want to make sure that you will continue to have these things. This means identifying the patterns of nature and coming up with strategies to cope with them or benefit from them in order to improve the quality of life. That is still what science is about today. Just because it is a little more abstract than designing a better spear to skewer a boar does not mean that the basic purpose of all this learning has changed.
Bigger brains or healthy teeth?
So if higher latitude equals larger brain capacity.... then Sarah Palin should be a genius.
What the hell happened there?
So, where are all those "corellation != causation" folks now?
How do we know that bigger brains didn't lead to darker winters and higher mountains?
Riddle me that!
I don't see how growth from two different stimuli are mutually exclusive.
If I had to sit around and eat blubber to survive I would likely spend a lot of that time thinking about other things to take my mind off of it. That in itself would consume lots of calories and help keep me warm. </sarcasm>
Correlation and causality are not the same. Also, I really would like people to stop publishing articles on "Scientists say", a study found, etc without publishing a link to the peer reviewed article so we can understand what is going on. If we don't have such reasons we can make this sort of reasoning too: "Northern latitudes are have less light during winters, and people have bigger brains to deal with the depression that is associated with lack of light." Of course I just pulled that out of my behind, and it's only meant to indicate that any yahoo can come up with some theory behind correlation. So, you have to control for all sorts of variables before making such conclusions, but heck, we just care about the 2 line summary, eh?
If this was an xkcd it would be obligatory, but it's smbc, so I don't think it counts...
http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=001#comic
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Stupid people died because they can't figure out how to survive the cold winters. The surviving smarter people would likely have larger brains. None of this having to do with light conditions.
RTFA "The Oxford University team said bigger brains did not make people smarter. Larger vision processing areas fill the extra capacity, they write in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal."
But just as computers with very fast GPUs can have those GPUs put to other uses, thereby increasing the computer's overall processing power, isn't it reasonable to assume the same is true with the visual processing areas of the brain?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"We found a positive relationship between absolute latitude and both eye socket size and cranial capacity."
Pretty much every physical measurement of every land animal is positively correlated with absolute latitude. This is because the mean temperature is negatively correlated with distance from the equator, and larger body size is adaptive at colder temperatures. A larger body has relatively smaller heat losses, and thus a more stable temperature. This doesn't matter much in the tropics (except at high altitudes), but it can be important when you get to areas with serious cold seasons.
You can find this as an example of adaptation in most intro biology textbooks. It's not clear that this story adds anything new to this old observation.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
taking place a long time before humans living at high latitude finally learned how to produce - and consume - distilled liquor.
The latter of which being a completely different way to adapt to long, dark winter nights...