Emiliano Bruner, paleoneurologist at CENIEH, has published a paper about functional craniology in the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, discussing the anatomical and evolutionary relationships between skull and brain, and evidencing possible structural problems associated with the large brain size of our species.
This is a review article, i.e. a summary of the work developed in the laboratory of Paleoneurology at CENIEH in recent years, where topics that join evolutionary studies in neuroanatomy with medicine and neurobiology are presented, and where functional craniology is shown from a perspective involving evolutionary biology (brain evolution and paleoneurology) and biomedical fields.

As Emiliano Bruner explains, the anatomical relationships between brain and skull or brain metabolism and thermoregulation processes are interesting for both paleontologists and surgeons, and these topics are closely related to variations in brain size. Changes in the parietal areas of our species, involving significant variations in the anatomical, metabolic and vascular complexity, may have generated a vulnerability to neurodegenerative processes, as those observed in Alzheimer’s disease" says Bruner.

According to this publication, the particular relationship between the brain and the bones of the face throughout human evolution can also be related to a conflict between orbits, eyeballs and frontal lobes, which ultimately can affect the processes associated with vision, and cause visual impairment, such as myopia.

Very large, complex and expensive brain
Researchers from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), the Montana Tech of the University of Montana (USA) and Keio University ( Japan ) have also participated in this work which is part of a project with specialists in many different fields of neuroscience that demonstrate the benefits and costs involved in the evolution of a large, complex, expensive brain.

Scientists Chet Sherwood, from George Washington University (USA) and Suzana Herculano- Houzel, from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro ( Brazil ) are the editors of this collection of papers for a special issue published between the journals Frontiers in Neuroanatomy and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, entitled "The Human Brain 's Place in Nature : Evolution of Large Brains".