Scientists Discover How Humans Develop Larger Brains Than Other Apes (phys.org) 77
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.org: A new study is the first to identify how human brains grow much larger, with three times as many neurons, compared with chimpanzee and gorilla brains. The study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, identified a key molecular switch that can make ape brain organoids grow more like human organoids, and vice versa. The study, published in the journal Cell, compared "brain organoids" -- 3-D tissues grown from stem cells which model early brain development -- that were grown from human, gorilla and chimpanzee stem cells.
During the early stages of brain development, neurons are made by stem cells called neural progenitors. These progenitor cells initially have a cylindrical shape that makes it easy for them to split into identical daughter cells with the same shape. The more times the neural progenitor cells multiply at this stage, the more neurons there will be later. As the cells mature and slow their multiplication, they elongate, forming a shape like a stretched ice-cream cone. Previously, research in mice had shown that their neural progenitor cells mature into a conical shape and slow their multiplication within hours. They found that in gorillas and chimpanzees this transition takes a long time, occurring over approximately five days.
Human progenitors were even more delayed in this transition, taking around seven days. The human progenitor cells maintained their cylinder-like shape for longer than other apes and during this time they split more frequently, producing more cells. This difference in the speed of transition from neural progenitors to neurons means that the human cells have more time to multiply. This could be largely responsible for the approximately three-fold greater number of neurons in human brains compared with gorilla or chimpanzee brains.
During the early stages of brain development, neurons are made by stem cells called neural progenitors. These progenitor cells initially have a cylindrical shape that makes it easy for them to split into identical daughter cells with the same shape. The more times the neural progenitor cells multiply at this stage, the more neurons there will be later. As the cells mature and slow their multiplication, they elongate, forming a shape like a stretched ice-cream cone. Previously, research in mice had shown that their neural progenitor cells mature into a conical shape and slow their multiplication within hours. They found that in gorillas and chimpanzees this transition takes a long time, occurring over approximately five days.
Human progenitors were even more delayed in this transition, taking around seven days. The human progenitor cells maintained their cylinder-like shape for longer than other apes and during this time they split more frequently, producing more cells. This difference in the speed of transition from neural progenitors to neurons means that the human cells have more time to multiply. This could be largely responsible for the approximately three-fold greater number of neurons in human brains compared with gorilla or chimpanzee brains.
Only some of them. (Score:2, Informative)
There's a great number of monkeys out there in society operating on mostly brain stem, topped with solid bone.
Re: Only some sort of penis. (Score:2)
RNirePb RRDNGDNG BBDDPhA LLuSPh ALLuSPh ALLuSPhA
It's a puppy. No! It's a ghost! Wait, no. it's a dolphin!
Oh. It's just an imbecile with a keyboard. How disappointing.
(JFC. This cunt's post is just fine, but my ellipses "look like ascii art". Nice job, /., keep up the excellent work! /s)
Re: Only some of them. (Score:3)
The button works. Less sure about those who get the notices.
Racism exists on Slashdot because, sadly, after Kuro5hin died, the morons switched over to here. You cannot be racist and a nerd. Nerds are driven by asking questions, racists are driven by suppressing them.
Slashdot was founded on free speech, but if those with anything to say go elsewhere, there is no speech.
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Basically social media is a bleeding, cancerous, pustulating boil on the collective ass of society.
Unfortunately, this includes Slashdot too.
It didn't start out that way.
But it got dragged down into the shit eventually.
Proof that there's nothing out there that someone can't ruin.
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The problem is GIGO is the DEFAULT.
And knowing that, social media basically threw its doors wide and screamed "DEFILE ME!"
And public masochism has always been so gauche.
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I got modded down to -1 for pointing out racism.
And WTF is this "you can't be a nerd and a racist". Did you forget #gamergate?
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I got modded down to -1 for pointing out racism.
And WTF is this "you can't be a nerd and a racist". Did you forget #gamergate?
There are always going to be people who would like to suppress what you write. Some times the truth triggers people. Recently I had a post where I noted that scientists rushed to preserve AGW data after Trump was elected. Then noted that both far left and far right try to suppress words they don't like.
A truly inarguable truth in both cases, and it's called flamebait. Which in the end proves my expression of truth.
Ya done okay, my friend. Getting modded down for speaking truth only shows us that there ar
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When you cut out a man's tongue, you are not proving him wrong.
You're only showing that you fear what he has to say.
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I am well aware of gamergate. But being able to play Super Mario Kart does not qualify you as even an Apprentice Anorak in Nerddom. I doubt you can find even a single nerd amongst the sexist animals that insulted humanity by their existence.
The women who were insulted and degraded? I suspect they appeared threatening because they really were geeks and nerds. People feel threatened by the superior.
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And the comment wasn't racial.
Well, unless you mind calling all humans monkeys.
But hey, if it makes this sad sack's day to imagine they're being a crusader about something...
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I REALLY LOVE FUCK , IF YOU LIKE IT TOO
Silly spammer, this is /.! We're all only figurative fuckers, not literal ones!
Sometimes bigger is just bigger (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no absolute "better" (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes to neurons more pretty much is better - but better doesn't map directly to intelligence. Neurons get used for a lot more than abstract reasoning.
Take the elephant for example - while a human that has an oversized "thinking" portion of our brain, an elephant has an oversized "muscle control" portion of their brain. Which makes sense - a human has about 600 muscles in our body, while an elephant's trunk alone has 40,000. It seems that combination of power, flexibility, and fine muscle control comes with a hefty neural operating cost.
Re:There is no absolute "better" (Score:4, Interesting)
True, humans have a far larger number of neurons in the cerebral cortex than almost all other animals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Obviously, that is not the entire story of intelligence, given that a number of cetaceans handily beat us in this regard. It seems that having a lot of cortical neurons is a prerequisite for intelligence, not a guarantee.
The topology and thus function of the neurons is a very important factor, which isn't really surprising. The same holds for artificial neural networks but also for CPU transistor count vs. topology with regard to performance.
Re:There is no absolute "better" (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true.
Of course it's also possible that whales actually do have us handily beat in intelligence - it's just a form sufficiently alien that we can't appreciate its scope. Without hands the whole "tool making" thing has severely limited potential, and a whole lot of our abstract reasoning ability could be readily understood as making tools out symbols. Whales in contrast seem to have a huge amount of their brainpower involved in their sonar, and appear to have a truly astounding ability to extract vast amount of fine detail from what would seem to be a very limited one-dimensional information stream. If that capacity forms a cornerstone of their intelligence, similar to how our visual cortex appears to be heavily involved in our own symbolic reasoning, I can't even begin to imagine the ways in which their thought processes might differ from ours.
And of course the lack of a common language severely undermines our ability to evaluate their intelligence beyond the most primitive problem-solving abilities. Their language does appear to be considerably simpler than human languages - which would seem to count against their intelligence - but then I've also heard suggestions that they may also be able to actually project artificial sonar images to each other, which could be halfway to telepathy for communicating complex concepts, and greatly reduce the value of complex language in the first place.
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Whales in contrast seem to have a huge amount of their brainpower involved in their sonar, and appear to have a truly astounding ability to extract vast amount of fine detail from what would seem to be a very limited one-dimensional information stream.
I've always thought dolphin intelligence experiments that revolve around an LCD screen are butt stupid. To the dolphin, it's an unchanging flat panel to their most important sense. Trying to get them to look at it is ridiculous. Dolphin experiments should involve distinct sonar shapes, not visual shapes.
Re: Sometimes bigger is just bigger (Score:3)
You are (a) ignoring the complexity of the body (dividing neurons by body mass is a good start), and (b) considering all cells equal (you should really exclude motor neurons).
If you do this, only the long-finned pilot whale is remotely similar. Even the bottlenose dolphin has only half the significant brain to body mass ratio. Most animals aren't remotely close to even that.
You also have to consider neuron size. Avian neurons are smaller than mammalian neurons, so an equal mass gives an unequal neuron count
Planet of the apes. (Score:3)
OK, so what happened when you left the switch on constantly?
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OK, so what happened when you left the switch on constantly?
I'd expect they keep multiplying as pre-neurons and never become neurons. Instead of forming a brain the foetus dies of prenatal brain-tissue cancer.
Re: Planet of the apes. (Score:1)
That probably won't work, but Neanderthal brains were slightly larger) just not as well structured), so it should be possible to set the switch to that size with modern human brain architecture.
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That probably won't work, but Neanderthal brains were slightly larger) just not as well structured)
This sounds suspicious. Do we have evidence neanderthals were dumber than humans because their brains were less well-structured, or are we just assuming humans were smarter because we're the humans, then making up reasons for that?
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Do we have evidence neanderthals were dumber than humans because...
I think the evidence is along the lines of "we are here and they are not (for the most part)".
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No, there's not a shred of evidence that Neanderthals were dumber. There is limited evidence they invented art, symbolic representation, proto writing and maps.
All we know for certain is that they had a different brain layout similar to that of other apes, but that it was larger than the modern human brain by a decent amount.
Some of that went into superior eyesight and superior sense of smell, but all parts of the brain were enlarged so that's not the whole story.
But because we know, in advance, that the ho
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This? [amazonaws.com]
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pedants are pedantic (Score:2)
Great Apes.
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Makes me sad for the Gibbons, the only apes that don't get to be great apes.
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Makes me sad for the Gibbons, the only apes that don't get to be great apes.
They like to think of themselves as magnificent apes.
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Makes me sad for the Gibbons, the only apes that don't get to be great apes.
They like to think of themselves as magnificent apes.
I'm going to point that out to my wife, who is always calling me a shitgibbon.
Re: pedants are pedantic (Score:3)
The Goodies solved that.
Re: pedants are pedantic (Score:4, Funny)
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70's Hanna-Barbera cartoons fits some definition of "culture". I liked the shark one, he reminded me of Curly.
Re: Humans Aren't Apes (Score:1)
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Re: Humans Aren't Apes (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct, humans are not apes. But we share a common ancestor. Not that long ago in evolutionary timescales.
Incorrect, actually. At least scientifically speaking, although you can argue common use. In taxonomy, we are actually apes generally and great apes more specifically. Even without bringing evolution into it, simply classifying us by physical characteristics, we're obviously apes. Of course, a lot of people seem to object to classifying humans as animals at all despite the fact that we are, biologically, very obviously animals. Overall, it is very obvious that we are great apes, apes, primates, mammals, chordates/vertebrates, animals, and Eukaryotic. There are very specific characteristics required to be in each of those groupings, and we have those characteristics. Our cells have a nucleus and chromosomes. We consume food, move, breathe oxygen and reproduce sexually. We have spines. We are warm blooded, have hair, produce milk for our young, who we give live birth to. We have large brains, visual acuity and color vision, dexterous hands and a shoulder girdle. We are tailless and have a wider degree of shoulder motion relative to other primates and characteristic sinuses. Finally, we're bigger than gibbons.
Scientifically speaking, it is ridiculous to consider us anything other than great apes even before genetic analysis. After you examine our DNA, our closeness to chimps/bonobos, then gorillas, then orangutans, then gibbons is obvious. It is possible to look directly at the evidence of the mutations that occurred as we evolved. Now, once again, if you want to play semantic games about traditional meanings of the word ape vs. current scientific understanding, then sure, you can claim that humans aren't apes, but it's basically meaningless from a scientific point of view.
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What is amazing is that something like 95% of our DNA is the same.
That 5% is mostly unconnected with intelligence.
Whereas apes have great difficulty playing noughts and crosses, yet we (on slashdot at least) can solve differential equations.
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#include <thinking.h>
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And yes, while we can solve differential equations, a chimp can rip your arm off of your body.
I guess our evolutionary branches focused on different things.
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98.7% for Humans and Bonobos. And yes, while we can solve differential equations, a chimp can rip your arm off of your body. I guess our evolutionary branches focused on different things.
And let us not forget the Orangutans. I'm certain they are one tiny mutation away from becoming humanlike smart and super strong.
Re: Humans Aren't Apes (Score:2)
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Well, fair enough. That is certainly true. The stuff about the semantics involved, etc. is more a general reply to a number of different people rather than just your post, but it sort of got rolled into that one reply.
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Correct, humans are not apes. But we share a common ancestor. Not that long ago in evolutionary timescales.
Incorrect.
We are Great Apes (Hominidae), a branch of Ape (Hominoidea).
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On what basis do you deny that humans are apes? More specifically, what definition of ape are you using that excludes humans?
Being of the cladistic persuasion, I definitely consider humans to be apes, but there are other ways of arranging taxonomy. The thing is, I'm not familiar with ANY where humans aren't apes. (Of course, I also don't consider fish to be a proper group, because some fish are more closely related to us than to some other fish.)
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You're are right not Ape but Great Apes! Humans are a member of hominids which is a member of the... Great Apes.
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But they are both members of the superfamily Hominoidea, AKA Apes [wikipedia.org]
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Well, not all of us anyway. Some are clearly vegetables.
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Well, not all of us anyway. Some are clearly vegetables.
The vegetarians HAVE been telling us that "You are what you eat!"
I, for one ... (Score:4, Funny)
... welcome our new Monkey Overlords.
"What could go wrong?"
Re: I, for one ... (Score:5, Funny)
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You were wrong in what you said, it's chim-pan-a to chim-pan-zed!
The Planet of the Apes has arrived! (Score:1)
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You mean, we will become their slaves.
Let's Get Started! (Score:1)
Soldiers (Score:2)
So, what has been seen as food in certain countries might now be seen as future soldier material there. The physique and the natural aggressive tendencies of some great apes, combined with human level intelligence will lead to interesting war footage
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And my thought was "Now we can uplift mice!".
Let me guess... (Score:2)
Let me guess... It was from playing a lot of video games?