Biological anthropology and neuroscience: studies of the brain in the human lineage

Abstract

The study of the structural and functional properties of the brain of Homo sapiens, and of other non-human primates, is a founding topic in the research tradition of biological anthropology. However, early questioning of the racial-typological perspective led to the abandonment of intraspecific analyses, strongly limiting their integration into neurosciences. This study presents a critical historical analysis of brain research carried out from biological anthropology and neurosciences—particularly in biomedicine—, with an emphasis on current human populations. Finally, we discuss some topics that could strengthen both areas. We conclude that the ontological and theoretical-methodological corpus developed within biological anthropology for the study of patterns of spatio-temporal variation in phenotypic and genetic traits, as well as the evolutionary processes and environmental factors that modeled them, could be a significant contribution to the studies developed by neurosciences. Rev Arg Antrop Biol