Heesom-Green, Sian and Shock, Jonathan and Nitschke, Geoff (2026) Big Brains and Changing Environments: Cause or Consequence?, Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2026), 13-17 July 2026, San José, Costa Rica, 121-124, ACM Press.
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Abstract
Large brains are metabolically costly, and associations with changing environments do not imply they evolved there, as the Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis (CBH) would suggest. They may instead evolve in stable conditions and later facilitate colonization of changing environments. Using neuro-evolution in an artificial seasonal foraging task, we compared agents evolving exclusively in changing environments to agents first evolved in static environments before transitioning. Results show that larger neural networks in dynamic environments arise mainly from prior static evolution, achieving superior performance under unpredictable changes. Our results challenge strict CBH predictions, provide agent-based (computational) support for a colonization-based account and highlight the role of evolutionary history in brain size evolution.
| Item Type: | Conference paper |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Computing methodologies > Artificial intelligence |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Oct 2026 07:01 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Oct 2026 07:01 |
| URI: | https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1821 |
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