Introducing the brain: our connections differ from chimp (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 07, 2020, 22:49 (1382 days ago) @ David Turell

It is not just enlargement but a different organization of connections:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-human-brains-are-different-it-has-a-lot-...

"What makes the human brain special? That question is not easy to answer—and will occupy neuroscientists for generations to come. The organ is certainly bigger than expected for our body size. And it has its own specialized areas—one of which is devoted to processing language. ... brain scans have started to show that the particular way neurons connect to one another is also part of the story.

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"Though human brains follow the mammalian connection game plan, they also show some striking innovations. In a head-to-head comparison of human connectomes with those of chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, published last year,...revealed 33 human-specific connections. These unique links were longer and more important to network efficiency than 255 connections that were shared in the two species. The distance-spanning connections also tied together high-level “associative” areas in the cortex that are involved in language, tool use and imitation.

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"When van den Heuvel and his colleagues looked at language areas, a “connectivity fingerprint” popped out. Chimps have their own limited versions of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, the regions responsible for human language production and comprehension, respectively. But in humans the connections between the two are stronger. And the connections from Broca’s area to other regions of the brain are actually weaker. It as though the two regions have dedicated their processing might to each other and set the stage for language."

Comment: It is not just size but different purposeful connections designed by God that make our brain so different