Study Reveals Possible New Key to Human Evolution

For the first five years of life, human cognition slowly comes to fruition, receiving and storing information and experience from the environment and enabling humans to advance beyond the capabilities of their primate cousins, according to a study published online in Genome Research. An international team of researchers have identified extended synaptic development in the prefrontal cortex of the human brain that sheds new light on the evolution of human cognition and suggests another reason why the human family diverged from other primates 4-6 million years ago.

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The detailed report of the study is published online (in advance of the print version) on Thursday, February 2, 2012: Liu X, Somel M, Tang L, Yan Z, Jiang X, Guo S, Yuan Y, He L, Oleksiak A, Zhang Y, Li N, Hu Y, Chen W, Qiu Z, Pääbo S, and Khaitovich P., Extension of cortical synaptic development distinguishes humans from chimpanzees and macaques, Genome Res doi: 10.1101/gr.127324.111.

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