Molecular and cellular reorganization of neural circuits in the human lineage

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aan3456
• Publication Date: 2017-11-23T19:10:42Z
• Authors: André M. M. Sousa; Ying Zhu; Mary Ann Raghanti; Robert R. Kitchen; Marco Onorati; Andrew T. N. Tebb...; Bernardo Stutz; Kyle A. Meyer; Mingfeng Li; Yuka Imamura Kawa...; Fuchen Liu; Raquel Garcia Perez; Marta Mele; Tiago Carvalho; Mario Skarica; Forrest O. Gulden; Mihovil Pletikos; Akemi Shibata; Alexa R. Stephenson; Melissa K. Edler; John J. Ely; John D. Elsworth; Tamas L. Horvath; Patrick R. Hof; Thomas M. Hyde; Joel E. Kleinman; Daniel R. Weinberger; Mark Reimers; Richard P. Lifton; Shrikant M. Mane; James P. Noonan; Matthew W. State; Ed S. Lein; James A. Knowles; Tomas Marques-Bonet; Chet C. Sherwood; Mark B. Gerstein; Nenad Sestan
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 570; Pan troglodytes; General Science & Technology; 1.1 Normal biological development and functioning; Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; 610; Neocortex; Transcriptomes; 03 medical and health sciences; Species Specificity; Interneurons; Neural Pathways; Genetics; Animals; Humans; Sistema nerviós; Ximpanzé comú; Phylogeny; Multidisciplinary; Gene Expression Profiling; Human Genome; Neurosciences; Biological Sciences; Escorça cerebral; Cercopitècids; Neurological; Macaca; Transcriptome

The makings of the primate brain

Although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between their and our cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. overlaid transcriptome and histological analyses to see what makes human brains different from those of nonhuman primates. Various differentially expressed genes, such as those encoding transcription factors, could alter transcriptional programs. Others were associated with neuromodulatory systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons found in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Science , this issue p. 1027