The study of the evolution of brain–behaviour relationships concerns understanding the causes and repercussions of cross‐ and within‐species variability. Understanding such variability is a main objective of evolutionary and cognitive neuroscience, and it may help explaining the appearance of psychopathological phenotypes. Although brain evolution is related to the progressive action of selection and adaptation through multiple paths (e.g. mosaic vs. concerted evolution, metabolic vs. structural and functional constraints), a coherent, integrative framework is needed to combine evolutionary paths and neuroscientific evidence. Here, we review the literature on evolutionary pressures focusing on structural–functional changes and developmental constraints. Taking advantage of recent progress in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, we propose a twofold hypothetical model of brain evolution. Within this model, global and local trajectories imply rearrangements of neural subunits and subsystems and of behavioural repertoires of a species, respectively. We incorporate these two processes in a game in which the global trajectory shapes the structural–functional neural substrates (i.e. players), while the local trajectory shapes the behavioural repertoires (i.e. stochastic payoffs).

中文翻译：

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通过博弈论结合大脑与行为关系的局部和全局进化轨迹-整合神经科学的新前景。

脑与行为关系演变的研究涉及了解跨物种间和物种内变异的原因和影响。理解这种变异性是进化和认知神经科学的主要目标，并且可以帮助解释心理病理表型的出现。尽管大脑进化与通过多种途径（例如镶嵌与协调进化，代谢与结构和功能限制）的选择和适应的渐进作用有关，但仍需要一个连贯，整合的框架来结合进化途径和神经科学证据。在这里，我们回顾了有关演化压力的文献，重点关注结构-功能的变化和发展的制约因素。利用神经影像学和认知神经科学的最新进展，我们提出了大脑进化的双重假设模型。在此模型中，全局和局部轨迹分别暗示了神经亚基和子系统的重排以及物种的行为表述。我们将这两个过程合并到一个博弈中，整体轨迹塑造了结构功能神经底物（即玩家），而局部轨迹塑造了行为方式（即随机收益）。