• Question: Can the brain make any more advancements in its own evolution than it already has done? If yes, then how so?

    Asked by Jack to Ben, Sam, Kirsty, Maggi, Rose on 20 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Ben Kenward

      Ben Kenward answered on 20 Jun 2017:

      No species ever stops evolving – evolution is what happens when some individuals are more likely than others to reproduce and get their genes into the next generation. The new and different mix of genes in the next generation is basically what evolution is. Which direction evolution goes in depends on who gets to reproduce. Let’s say, for example, that smarter people get to have more babies – that means that over a long time people will evolve to become smarter. This is basically what has happened to the human species. However, things are a little different now. In most developed countries, because food is just not scarce in the same way that it once was, and you don’t need to be particularly clever to survive to have plenty of babies, then evolution is not likely to be making us more intelligent any more. This is partially a joke, but only partially: these days evolution is more likely to make us more Catholic than more intelligent, because Catholic people aren’t into birth control so have lots of babies. This is partially a joke because there is no such thing as a gene for being Catholic, but probably you get my point.

      Of course, it’s also worth considering the kind of crazy sci-fi stuff that could actually become real, like we genetically engineer ourselves to make ourselves more intelligent, or different in some other desirable ways – like maybe nicer! That kind of thing could happen.

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 20 Jun 2017:

      Hi Jack, great Q! It’ll be really interesting to see how our genes evolve once we begin implanting more technology in our bodies – contactless bank cards in our fingertips, facial recognition technology in our brains perhaps, and maybe a vitamin that gives us all the nutrients we need without farming animals and crops. Perhaps over time we would gradually become toothless money-machines who never forget a face! Sounds silly, and it is a bit, but the point I’m trying to make is that yes, humans will continue to evolve (although that process is very slow – we still have our wisdom teeth from the we used to eat mainly leaves so it’ll be a long time before we’d lose all our teeth, and we’ll need to come up with that vitamin design first), however whether advancements are always ‘positive’ is a different question! It’s certainly possible that we might genetically engineer ourselves to live longer and be more intelligent and so on – have you heard of the debate around designer babies? If not, google it, you might find it interesting 🙂

    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 20 Jun 2017:

      Hi Jack, That’s a great question! Yes definitely! The thing about evolution is that it will never stop! We are constantly being faced with changes in the environment so we will keep evolving in response to that. Actually I think that biologists and psychologists will look back on this current time as one of the ones that will have caused a great deal of fast changes in brain. For example, if you think about the growth of technology – we are now constantly facing a huge amount of information coming at us very quickly. Our brains have had to adapt to this – and have had to adapt to it very quickly because technology is just moving so quickly. I think technology will continue to develop so our brains will have to keep evolving to keep up. I think it’s a fascinating subject, and one that your generation might be able to start investigating as you have been living with technology most of your lives! I’d love to look into this further because I think that technology has had an incredible impact on us – both our behaviour, and our biology!

    • Photo: Sam Carr

      Sam Carr answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      There’s a great little short story called “The Machine Stops” by EM Forster:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

      He wrote it many years ago and it’s his prediction for the future of humankind. He predicted that we’d all be living in small “pods” that have computerised functions that make sure we don’t want for anything. All of our needs for communication, exercise, food, information, entertainment – everything – can be catered for by being inside our pods with our supercomputers.

      He made a prediction about how society “could” evolve. One of the main elements of his prediction is the idea that no human being ever sees another human being face to face – ever. That ceases to be a part of human life. If that happened – how would the brain evolve to respond to that? Wouldn’t the parts of our brain linked to the highly “social” side of being human that we currently have just “evolve away”?

      In short, the brain will always adapt to the world in which we find ourselves – it will always evolve. Whether that evolution is an “advancement” is always a judgement to be made.

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