The more popular a baby's name becomes, the less likely the next generation of parents will use it. The same goes for dog breeds and the decline in popularity of specific breeds from one generation of owners to the next.
How the human brain processes information differs from the brains of other primates. This may help explain why human cognitive abilities are superior to other animals.
Motor areas of the cerebral cortex are dedicated to sonar production and wing control in Egyptian fruit bats.
Physical stress responses such as nail-biting or fidgeting may have evolved to show we are in a weakened state, prompting others to act more positively toward us.
Bipedalism dramatically reshaped the hominin pelvis into a real birth canal. Researchers report Australopithecus had complex birth patterns compared to Great Apes and were likely to have practiced co-operative breeding.
The human ability to recognize patterns in pitch and tempo may emerge from pre-existing abilities in other species.
An examination of artistic designs on stones believed to be over 15,000 years old reveals our early ancestors probably created intricate artwork by firelight.
In other primate species, the brain areas that comprise the default mode network involve two systems that are not strongly connected to each other. The regions, one responsible for cognitive tasks and the other for the suppression of external events, appear to be only recently linked by evolution. This linkage may have facilitated the capacity for abstract thought that lead to the rapid evolution of human cognitive abilities.
Fine motor skills utilized by using tools engage parts of the brain similar to those mobilized when we think about the construction of a sentence, researchers report.
Researchers have named a new species of human ancestor. Homo bodoensis lived in Africa around half a million years ago and is a direct ancestor of modern humans.
Research of lemurs sheds light on the evolutionary origins of musicality in humans.
A new study reports human brain size decreased in size approximately 3,000 years ago, and the brain shrinkage parallels the expansion of collective intelligence in human societies.
