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evolutionary neuroscience

This shows the outline of a person and vertebrates.

·November 3, 2025·6 min read

Why Warm-Blooded Animals Evolved the Biggest Brains

A global study of vertebrates reveals that body temperature is the key driver behind brain size evolution. Warm-blooded species like mammals and birds can maintain the energy demands of larger brains, while cold-blooded species are limited by fluctuating external temperatures.

This shows the outline of heads and DNA.

Autism Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·September 9, 2025·4 min read

Evolution of Human Brain May Explain High Autism Rates

A new study suggests that autism may be linked to the rapid evolution of brain cell types unique to humans. Researchers found that outer-layer neurons in the human brain evolved far more quickly than in other apes, with significant changes in autism-associated genes.

This shows people of different ages and speech bubbles.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 8, 2025·3 min read

How Teens and Adults Really Change Language

For decades, scholars believed children’s speech errors were the seeds of language change, but new research challenges that view. The study argues that everyday language use among adolescents and adults, not children, is the real driver of linguistic evolution.

This shows a mom and baby surrounded by speech bubbles.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 4, 2025·5 min read

Why Babies Babble: New Clues Reveal Language Origins

Human babies’ babbling is more than cute noise—it’s a feedback-driven learning strategy that sets the foundation for language. A new study shows that marmoset monkeys, despite being distant relatives, also babble and learn faster when adults respond, suggesting a shared mechanism.

This shows a map of the world with DNA and speech bubbles overlayed.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·August 30, 2025·5 min read

Genetics Reveal How Human Contact Shapes Language Evolution

A new study shows that genetic evidence of historical contact between populations reveals consistent patterns of language change. By combining genetic data with linguistic databases, researchers found that unrelated languages became 4–9% more similar after human contact.

This shows a hand reaching to grab a brain. Under the brain are primates, referencing the evolutionary benefit of longer thumbs.

Featured Neuroscience

·August 26, 2025·3 min read

Study Links Thumb Length to Brain Size and Cognition

New research reveals that primates with longer thumbs tend to have larger brains, suggesting that manual dexterity and brain evolution developed together. The study analyzed 94 living and extinct primate species and found a consistent link between thumb length and brain size.

This shows an early human walking besides Australopithecus next to a lake.

Featured Neuroscience

·August 13, 2025·7 min read

Fossils Show Early Humans and New Australopithecus Lived Together

An international team of researchers working at Ledi-Geraru in Ethiopia has uncovered fossils indicating that early Homo and a newly identified Australopithecus species coexisted between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago. The discovery includes 13 Australopithecus teeth, distinct from the famous Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy”), and confirms there is no evidence of Lucy’s kind after 2.95 million years ago.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 23, 2025·6 min read

How the Brain Decides to Flee or Freeze

A new study reveals how evolution fine-tunes instinctive fear responses by tweaking a key neural switch deep in the brain. Comparing two deer-mouse species, researchers found that forest-dwelling mice have hypersensitive escape circuits, while open-field mice are more likely to freeze.

Featured Neuroscience

·June 26, 2025·4 min read

Why Baby Talk May Be Uniquely Human

Child-directed speech, or “baby talk,” plays a crucial role in language development and is a near-universal human behavior. Researchers investigated whether this vocal strategy is shared with our closest relatives—great apes—and found that humans use infant-directed speech far more frequently.

This shows different animals in a forest setting.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 17, 2025·6 min read

Hidden Patterns Shape Animal Behavior Across Species

Despite vast ecological differences, animals from meerkats to hyenas appear to follow a shared behavioral architecture in how they switch between activities. By tracking movement patterns with accelerometers and using machine learning, researchers discovered that the longer an animal stays in one behavior—like resting or foraging—the less likely it is to switch, a pattern known as a “decreasing hazard function.”

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·May 16, 2025·3 min read

Silent Switches in DNA Gave Rise to Human Intelligence

Despite sharing over 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees, humans possess strikingly advanced cognitive and emotional abilities. A new study reveals that rapid shifts in gene regulation—rather than changes in protein-coding genes—may explain this leap.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·May 15, 2025·5 min read

Recessive Genes May Quietly Shape Health, Learning, and Fertility

Carriers of recessive gene mutations, long thought to be unaffected, may actually face subtle disadvantages, including more medical issues, shorter educational attainment, and reduced reproductive success. A study of over 300,000 individuals reveals that people who carry recessive genes for intellectual disability are especially impacted, despite having only one mutated gene copy.