Synonyms
Definition
The survival advantages of coping with environmental changes through behavioral adjustments should have been a major force favoring the evolution of large brains.
Introduction
The cognitive-buffer hypothesis (CBH) is an attempt to explain why some animals have evolved large brains despite substantial energetic and developmental costs. The hypothesis, first formulated by Allman and colleagues (Allman et al. 1993; Allman 2000), posits that the essential role of the brain is to buffer animals against environmental variation. Assuming that this buffering capacity increases with the size of the brain, the hypothesis suggests that brain expansions might have been an adaptive solution to environmental changes.
The mechanisms by which enlarged brains are supposed to enhance survival are cognitive, and include inventing new behaviors and adjusting old behaviors to new situations (Fig. 1). Thus, a large brain would primarily reduce...
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References
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Louis Lefebvre for comments and discussions, and the Spanish project CGL2013-47448-P for financial support.
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Sol, D., Ducatez, S., Sayol, F. (2016). Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis, The. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_897-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_897-1
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