Increased encephalization has evolutionary costs—high energy expenditure and (in humans) difficult birth of underdeveloped infants due to head size. Natural selection will not allow encephalization beyond a certain size unless it has offsetting benefits, which depend on the species and its environment. So it’s not a random walk (=neutral genetic drift) once you get far enough from the average, like we have.
Increased encephalization has evolutionary costs—high energy expenditure and (in humans) difficult birth of underdeveloped infants due to head size. Natural selection will not allow encephalization beyond a certain size unless it has offsetting benefits, which depend on the species and its environment. So it’s not a random walk (=neutral genetic drift) once you get far enough from the average, like we have.