BEIJING, January 15: A collaborative team of scientists from China and various countries has created the most detailed chimpanzee brain atlas to date, offering new insights into the evolution of the human brain, as reported by Science and Technology Daily. This groundbreaking study has been published in the journal The Innovation.
Chimpanzees, being one of humanity’s closest living relatives, have brains that are roughly one-third the size of human brains. Despite this size difference, they exhibit numerous similarities in neuroanatomy and cognitive functions with humans, making them crucial for comparative studies in understanding human brain evolution.
“One significant challenge in current cross-species neuroscience research is the lack of standardized brain reference systems that possess biological relevance,” remarked Fan Lingzhong, the study’s corresponding author and a researcher at the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Researchers have successfully developed the Chimpanzee Brainnetome Atlas (ChimpBNA) using brain connectivity data to construct this detailed atlas.
Using this new resource, they uncovered notable variations in connectivity patterns between chimpanzees and humans across most association cortices, indicating more complex and nuanced changes in brain connectivity during evolution than previously recognized.
According to Fan, the ChimpBNA will be a significant asset for neuroscience research and will provide fresh insights into the distinct features of the human brain.
“Moving forward, we plan to further expand the use of cross-species brain atlases to enhance their contributions to our understanding of nervous system evolution,” Fan added.
(UNI)
