The evolution of the human brain and disease susceptibility.

Evolutionary perspective is critical for understanding human biology, human medicine, and the traits that make human beings unique. One of the crucial characteristics that sets humans apart from other extant species is our cognitive ability, which allows for complex processes including symbolic thought, theory of mind, and syntactical-grammatical language, and is thought to arise from the expansion and specialization of the human nervous system. It has been hypothesized that the same evolutionary changes that allowed us to develop these valuable skills made humans susceptible to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease.

Modeling the Evolution of Human Brain Development Using Organoids.

In a recent issue of Nature, Kanton et al. explore human brain evolution and development by profiling the single-cell transcriptomes and epigenomes of cerebral organoids derived from human, chimpanzee, and macaque stem cells. Their results reveal key molecular characteristics that differentiate humans and non-human primates at the earliest stages of brain development.