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#537 Christopher Kuzawa: Developmental Plasticity, Life History, and Epigenetics

The Dissenter

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The Cost of the Brain

Anthropologists have been obsessed with brains for a long time, because it is the organ that most sets us apart from other species. Each gram of brain in a child around four or five, six years of age, is using twice the energy of the adult brain. The challenge, however, is finding a way to measure how costly the brain is. And so eventually we sort of prune, prune things down to the adult level and get at that 20 % of energy expenditure going to the brain.

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