They can also live on their own, and this ability to switch between a social and a solitary lifestyle makes them valuable models for
studying brain evolution.
Dartmouth neuroscientist Richard Granger, who
studies brain evolution, thinks it may not take much.
«More broadly, our framework allows for new experiments in silico to
study brain evolution, life history, and brain senescence.»
Not exact matches
In a
study published on Nov. 16, scientists discovered that human
brains exhibit more plasticity, propensity to be modeled by the environment, than chimpanzee
brains and that this may have accounted for part of human
evolution.
Understanding how and why we evolved such large
brains is one of the most puzzling issues in the
study of human
evolution.
«This connection between an innate call and the activity of a
brain area important to learned vocalisations suggests that during the
evolution of songbirds, the role of the song area in the
brain changed from being a simple vocalisation system for innate calls to a specialised neural network for learned songs,» concludes Manfred Gahr, coordinator of the
study.
Further
studies of casts of the inner braincase, which show impressions from surface features of the
brain, may help clarify N. alesi's position in ape
evolution, Nengo says.
If our results are confirmed in future
studies, it would be a unique demonstration of convergent
evolution of intelligence, involving the same neurotransmitter receptors despite the widely different
brain structures of birds and mammals.»
Describing himself as a «neuro - ethologist,» Brockmann hopes that the comparative
studies on three species native to India — A. cerana, A. dorsata, and A. florea — will help him understand the
evolution of dance communication and identify the changes in the
brain that accompanied the changes in behavior.
We know from comparative
studies in primates that this part of the
brain became highly specialized during hominin
evolution.
A new
study suggests that the debilitating disease schizophrenia may be a byproduct of the genetic changes that fueled the
evolution of the expansive human
brain.
The
study couldn't determine if those different
brain responses meant fathers are somehow hard wired through genetics or
evolution to treat sons differently than they treat daughters or if the fathers were conforming to societal norms relating to gender.
According to Fotini Koutroumpa, lead author of the
study and researcher at the UvA's Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), the results point to future research on the tiny but complex moth
brain, which will shed light on how the diverse pheromone systems of the thousands of moth species has changed throughout
evolution.
However, all regions of the human
brain have molecular signatures very similar to those of our primate relatives, yet some regions contain distinctly human patterns of gene activity that mark the
brain's
evolution and may contribute to our cognitive abilities, a new Yale - led
study has found.
The newly created Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group has selected four initial researchers — Jennifer Doudna of the University of California (UC), Berkeley, Ethan Bier of UC San Diego, James Collins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Bassem Hassan of the
Brain and Spine Institute in Paris — to receive $ 1.5 million each to
study topics ranging from novel techniques for gene editing, how shapes and forms arise over the course of
evolution, and how synthetic biology can create microbes that trap and kill dangerous bacteria.
«Considered in total, this
study provides important early archaeological evidence for meat eating, hunting and scavenging behaviors - cornerstone adaptations that likely facilitated
brain expansion in human
evolution, movement of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia, as well as important shifts in our social behavior, anatomy and physiology,» Ferraro said.
This greater ability to fashion our
brains in response to our environment, the
study maintains, could provide a link between biological
evolution and cultural
evolution.
«That is probably how, in the course of
evolution, we humans developed larger
brains,» says Wieland Huttner, summing up the
study.
A new
study from the George Washington University's Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology (CASHP) found that whereas brain size evolved at different rates for different species, especially during the evolution of Homo, the genus that includes humans, chewing teeth tended to evolve at more similar r
study from the George Washington University's Center for the Advanced
Study of Human Paleobiology (CASHP) found that whereas brain size evolved at different rates for different species, especially during the evolution of Homo, the genus that includes humans, chewing teeth tended to evolve at more similar r
Study of Human Paleobiology (CASHP) found that whereas
brain size evolved at different rates for different species, especially during the
evolution of Homo, the genus that includes humans, chewing teeth tended to evolve at more similar rates.
A decade ago, the lead author on the new
study, Masato Yoshizawa, wanted to understand
brain evolution by investigating the effects of natural selection on behavior.
«The findings of the
study indicate that simple causal relationships between the
evolution of
brain size, tool use and tooth size are unlikely to hold true when considering the complex scenarios of hominin
evolution and the extended time periods during which evolutionary change has occurred,» said Aida Gómez - Robles, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist at GW's CASHP.
Also in this issue, we take a trip to Harvard's
brain bank where thousands of specimens are waiting to be
studied, and we take on a burning question of human
evolution: If our
brains our shrinking, are we more efficient, or just not as bright?
Such dramatic effects on
brain size and function are unlikely in human carriers of BRCA1 mutations, the authors of the
study note, but they propose the findings could shed light on the gene's role in
brain evolution.
«Comparing human, chimpanzee and bonobo cells can give us clues to understand biological processes, such as infection, diseases,
brain evolution, adaptation or genetic diversity,» says senior research associate Iñigo Narvaiza, who led the
study with senior staff scientist Carol Marchetto at the Salk Institute in La Jolla.
«The significance of this
study is that we're going to see more comparative
studies of macromolecular concentrations — such as differences in proteins and lipids — which reveal things that can't be read out directly» from the genome, says Todd Preuss, a neuroscientist at Emory University who specializes in the
evolution of the human
brain and who was not involved in the
study.
Now, by
studying the lamprey, Caltech researchers have discovered an unexpected mechanism for the
evolution of the neurons of the peripheral nervous system — nerves outside of the
brain and spinal cord.
She
studies the process of cancer initiation and progression along with cancer stem cells, the
evolution of drug resistance and the dynamics of metastasis formation focusing on lung,
brain, breast and pancreatic cancers.
Although the original impetus of the work was to
study human
brain disease and development, says Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Christopher Walsh, the results also shed light on how the human
brain expanded during the course of
evolution.
«We found that genes expressed in the human
brain have in fact slowed down in their
evolution, contrary to some earlier reports,» says
study author Chung - I Wu, professor of ecology and
evolution at the University of Chicago.
Future
studies of
brain function and
evolution will increasingly take advantage of the approaches of systems biology, Wu suggested.
More recently, his lab started
studying the genetic basis of human
brain evolution as well as the signaling pathways underlying synaptic loss during early stages of Alzheimer's Disease progression.
Rather,
brain size is more accurately predicted by primates» diet, according to their new
study published in the journal Nature Ecology and
Evolution.
To enhance the utility of chimpanzees as a reference species for comparative
studies to better understand the structure, function, and
evolution of the human
brain
This highly specific tool use has implications for cognition and
brain evolution among cetaceans and could even be considered a case of problem solving, a phenomenon difficult to document in the wild, but well established in
studies of captive bottlenose dolphins [48].
Chimpanzees are among the closest living relatives of humans, making them a key species to
study in order to understand the
evolution of the human
brain.
His research team is interested in identifying genes that direct the development of the cerebral cortex, both because of their importance in human diseases and because
studying those genes will help in learning about the normal development and
evolution of the
brain.
His laboratory has extensive expertise in the pathology of neuropsychiatric disorders and has established an international reputation in quantitative approaches to neuroanatomy and
studies of
brain evolution.
A veterinary behaviorist has also demonstrated their academic skills in graduate school classes such as ethology,
evolution of social behavior, developmental biology, neurobiology of behavior, learning theory, animal cognition, psychopharmacology (
study of medications that affect the
brain and emotions), and statistical analysis.
Larry Young, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University who
studies the neurological basis of complex social behaviors, thinks human
evolution has harnessed an ancient neural circuit that originally evolved to strengthen the mother - infant bond during breastfeeding, and now uses this
brain circuitry to strengthen the bond between couples as well.