Why is the human brain so large? Scientists Solve the Mystery

KOMPAS.com – One of the most important characteristics that distinguish humans from primates is the enormous brain size.

A chimpanzee, for example, only has a brain volume of 400 cubic centimeters, while a gorilla is 500 cubic centimeters.

Compare with the human brain reaching 1,500 cubic centimeters as an adult, the human brain is three times the size of a chimpanzee and gorilla.

This difference has long been a mystery among researchers, as the brains of humans and developing primates are difficult to study in detail.

Also read: The Evolution of the Human Body, the Growing Brain Due to the Extinction of Large Animals

However, recently a group of international research teams has begun to uncover it. They found gen which makes the human brain bigger than the brains of gorillas and chimpanzees.

If these genes were tampered with, the research team found that they could make the human brain grow to resemble that of an ape and vice versa.

Reporting from The Guardian, Thursday (25/3/2021); Dr Madelieine Lancaster from the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge who was involved in the study said we saw differences in the behavior of cells at a very, very early stage that made the human brain grow bigger.

“We can explain all the differences in size (using these findings),” he said.

Lancaster and colleagues discovered this particular molecule after collecting human, gorilla and chimpanzee cells left over from medical tests or surgery.

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The research team then reprogrammed the cells to become cell punca and growing them into organoids, tiny lumps of brain tissue only a few millimeters wide.

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