http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-sophisticated-wiring-bigger-brain-humans.html
Yet more evidence that the human brain is not only bigger than that of the chimp but better. Dan Geschwind and colleagues in LA have been looking at gene expression particularly in the pre-frontal cortex and find much more complex patterns of gene expression there.
""When we looked at gene expression in the frontal lobe, we saw a striking increase in molecular complexity in the human brain," said Geschwind, who is also a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at UCLA.
Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
No third-party punishment in chimpanzees
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/22/1203179109.abstract?etoc
The research machine headed by Mike Tomasello at EVA Leipzig has been comparing chimpanzees to humans with respect to social justice. Humans will punish a third party even if they themselves are not the prime subject of injury. Chimpanzees will by-stand while one chimpanzee robs another and there is no third-party policing of behaviour.
The research machine headed by Mike Tomasello at EVA Leipzig has been comparing chimpanzees to humans with respect to social justice. Humans will punish a third party even if they themselves are not the prime subject of injury. Chimpanzees will by-stand while one chimpanzee robs another and there is no third-party policing of behaviour.