Exceptional Evolutionary Expansion of Prefrontal Cortex in Great Apes and Humans.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Comparative evolutionary and morphometric scaling study across primate species without human clinical trial or epidemiological design.
PubMed 28162899 · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.01.020
What was done
The authors investigated prefrontal cortex allometric scaling across anthropoid primates to test whether prefrontal cortex enlargement in great apes and humans follows general primate scaling rules or reflects exceptional, non-allometric evolutionary expansion.
What was found
The abstract reports no raw numerical measurements, species sample sizes, or test statistics. It reports that prefrontal cortex expansion in great apes and humans is non-allometric and estimates that this evolutionary enlargement originated at the root of great apes approximately 19–15 million years ago.
Why it matters
The findings indicate that disproportionate prefrontal enlargement is a shared evolutionary feature of great apes and humans rather than an exclusively human specialization, linking cortical organization to deep ancestral neurodevelopmental shifts.
Limits
The abstract does not disclose the number of species or individual brain specimens examined, nor the specific imaging or anatomical datasets used. Inferences about ancestral phenotypes and divergence times depend on comparative modeling and allometric assumptions.
Cited by
- supports Humans, as Old World primates, possess an expanded prefrontal cortex that facilitates higher-order cognitive planning, reflection, and strategizing.