What makes the human brain different from that of other primates has long been a question. A new study suggests that the answer may be in a surprising twist of evolutionary fate: one of the brain’s ...

Among the newly identified brain cell types were some in the neocortex and the striatum region, which controls movement and certain other functions. Scientists have reached a milestone in an ambitious ...

An international study changes the view that exposure to the toxic metal lead is largely a post-industrial phenomenon. The research reveals that our human ancestors were periodically exposed to lead ...

It suggests that manual dexterity and brain evolution are connected across the entire primate lineage, from lemurs to humans. Notably, the correlation held even when human data were excluded, ...

For more than a century, scientists have treated the brain as the undisputed command center of human evolution, with the rest of the body cast in supporting roles. A wave of new microbiome research is ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.

The brains of humans and other mammals contain a vast array of neuronal and non-neuronal cell types. The human capacity to process information into complex emotions, behaviours and decisions relies on ...

For decades, large stretches of human DNA were dismissed as "junk" and considered to serve no real purpose. In a new study published in Cell Genomics, researchers at Lund University in Sweden show ...

Scientists have uncovered new evidence suggesting that autism may have it roots in how the human brain has evolved. "Our results suggest that some of the same genetic changes that make the human brain ...

Until Homo floresiensis was discovered, scientists assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains. Via a process called encephalization, human brains evolved ...