人类为何锻炼？一种关于自主性体力付出的神经演化框架

摘要(中文译文)

人类进化使体力活动成为生存的必需条件。现代环境将努力与生态回报脱钩，产生了一种进化失配，倾向于能量节约而非自主运动。本综述区分了以生存为基础的体力活动——与生存直接耦合的祖先状态——与自主性锻炼——在缺乏即时代谢需求情况下进行的自愿行为。本文勾勒了一个神经进化框架，将自主性锻炼特征化为对原本为生存而塑造的神经系统的功能性再利用，其通过进化上保守的努力-奖赏估值回路运作，该回路计算情境依赖的成本-收益权衡。三条互补的进化路径介导这一过程：稳态补偿，即锻炼恢复祖先的生理维持信号；代价信号，即锻炼作为质量的诚实表型展示；以及奖赏重编码，即人类中皮层边缘回路将抽象意义和奖赏赋予体力消耗。这些机制解释了神经生物学外适应和文化中介如何使当代人群在缺乏生态必要性的情况下仍能维持持续的自愿努力。

Abstract

Hominin evolution made physical activity obligatory for survival. Modern environments decoupled effort from ecological returns, generating an evolutionary mismatch that favors energy conservation over voluntary movement. This review distinguishes between subsistence-based physical activity, the ancestral condition directly coupled to survival, and discretionary exercise, a voluntary behavior performed in the absence of immediate metabolic necessity. It delineates a neuro-evolutionary framework characterizing discretionary exercise as the functional repurposing of neural systems originally shaped for subsistence, operating through evolutionarily conserved effort-reward valuation circuitry that computes context-dependent cost-benefit trade-offs. Three complementary evolutionary pathways mediate this process: homeostatic compensation, where exercise reinstates ancestral physiological maintenance signals; costly signaling, where exercise functions as an honest phenotypic display of quality; and reward recoding, where human mesocorticolimbic circuitry attributes abstract significance and reward to physical exertion. These mechanisms explain how neurobiological exaptation and cultural mediation enable sustained voluntary effort in contemporary populations despite the absence of ecological necessity.

如何引用