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Babies’ brain growth reflects human evolution: study Washington: Watching how human brains grow between infancy and adulthood is almost similar to watching evolution in action, says a new study. Researchers at the Washington University found that the brain regions that expand the most during infancy and childhood are the same parts that expanded the most during evolution as humans diverged from other primates. It’s not an absolute one-to-one correlation, but the overlap is so striking that it’s hard to ignore, said David Van Essen, who led the study. For their study, the researchers analysed brain scans of 12 full-term infants and compared those with scans from 12 healthy young adults aged between 18 and 24 years. Data from the two groups were combined into a single atlas to quantify the differences between the infant and young-adult brains. They found that the cerebral cortex -- the wrinkled area on the surface of the brain responsible for higher mental functions -- grows in an uneven fashion. Every region expands as the brain matures, but the research showed one-quarter to one-third of the cortex expands approximately twice as much as other cortical areas as an infant matures into a young adult, LiveScience reported. According to the scientists, the findings revealed "evolution’s imprint on the human brain" because the rapidly developing parts of the brain are also those that differ most when the human brain is compared to primates’. "Through comparisons between humans and macaque monkeys, my lab previously showed that many of these high-growth regions are expanded in humans as a result of recent evolutionary changes that made the human brain much larger than that of any other primate," said Van Essen. "The correlation isn’t perfect, but it’s much too good to put down to chance." The high-growth regions are areas linked to advanced mental functions, such as language, reasoning and what Van Essen called "the abilities that make us uniquely human". He speculated that the full physical growth of these regions may be delayed somewhat to allow them to be shaped by early life experiences. Back |
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