Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 26 March 2013 Time: 08:01 PM ET
Brain organization, not overall size, may
be the key evolutionary difference between primate brains, and the key to what
gives humans their smarts, new research suggests.
In the study, researchers looked at 17
species that span 40 million years of evolutionary time, finding changes in the
relative size of specific brain regions, rather than changes in brain size, accounted
for three-quarters of brain evolution over that time. The study, published
today (March 26) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also revealed that
massive increases in the brain's prefrontal cortex played a critical role in
great ape evolution.
"For the first time, we can really
identify what is so special about great ape brain organization," said
study co-author Jeroen Smaers, an evolutionary biologist at the University
College London.
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