Cognitive powers unique to humans
3 Mar 2014 by Evoluted New Media
An area of the brain responsible for strategic planning, decision making and multi-tasking is unique to humans say researchers from the University of Oxford.
By comparing brain MRI scans of 25 adult human volunteers and 25 macaque monkeys, researchers pinpointed an area of the human brain which has no equivalent in our closest relatives.
“We tend to think that being able to plan the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans,” said Professor Matthew Rushworth from the Department of Experimental Psychology. “We’ve identified an area of the brain that appears to be uniquely human and is likely to have something to do with these cognitive powers.”
Rushworth and colleagues focussed on the human ventrolateral frontal cortex – an area of the brain involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language – and how key components of this area are connected to other areas of the brain.
“The brain is a mosaic of interlinked areas. We wanted to look at this very important region of the frontal part of the brain and see how many tiles there are and where they are placed,” said Rushworth. “We also looked at the connections of each tile – how they are wired up to the rest of the brain – as it is these connections that determine the information that can reach that component part and influence that part can have on other brain regions.”
Researchers divided the ventrolateral frontal cortex into 12 areas consistent across all individuals and compared the human brain region with the monkeys’.
Overall, the brains were very similar; 11 of the 12 areas were found in both species and connected up to other brain areas in similar ways. However, one area had no equivalent in the macaque; the lateral frontal pole prefrontal cortex.
“We have established an area in human frontal cortex which does not seem to have an equivalent in the monkey at all. This area has been identified with strategic planning and decision making as well as multi-tasking,” said Franz-Xaver Neubert, first author of the paper published in Neuron.
The group also found that auditory parts of the brain were very well connected with the human prefrontal cortex, but much less so in the macaque, suggesting this may be critical for our ability to understand and generate speech.
