Areas of human and monkey brains that are functionally similar aren’t always in the same place (Image: The Kobal Collection)
Clint Eastwood might sound like an unlikely candidate
to help investigate the evolution of the brain, but he has lent a
helping hand to researchers doing just that. It turns out that brain
regions that do the same job in monkeys and humans aren't always found
in the same part of the skull.
Previous
studies comparing brains across species tended to assume that human
brains were just blown-up versions of monkey brains and that functions
are carried out by anatomically similar areas.
To test this idea, Wim Vanduffel
of Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Catholic University of
Leuven (KUL) in Belgium, and colleagues scanned the brains of 24 people
and four rhesus monkeys while they watched The Good, The Bad and The
Ugly. They compared the brain responses of each individual to the same
sensory stimulation, and identified which brain areas had similar
functions.
The
majority of the human and monkey brain maps lined up, but some areas
with a similar function were in completely different places.
The
team say the discovery is crucial to building more accurate models of
our evolution. "You can't assume that because A and B are close
together in the monkey brain, they need to be close together in the
human brain," Vanduffel says.
Journal reference: Nature Methods, DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1868
http://www.newscientist.com/
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