Modern chimp brains share similarities with ancient hominids
Scans suggest certain folding patterns don’t mark humanlike neural advances after all
By
Bruce Bower
3:00pm, March 26, 2018
Groove patterns on the surface of modern chimpanzee brains throw a monkey wrench into proposals that some ancient southern African hominids evolved humanlike brain characteristics, a new study suggests.
MRIs of eight living chimps reveal substantial variability in the shape and location of certain features on the brain surface. Some of these brains showed surface creases similar to ones that were thought to have signaled a turn toward humanlike brain organization in ancient hominids hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. Paleoanthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University in Tallahassee and colleagues report their findings online March 13 in Brain, Behavior and Evolution.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/modern-chimp-brains-share-similarities-ancient-hominids
