ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Prolonged myelination in human neocortical evolution.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 329 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
329 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 716 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain structure and function in adult survivors of developmental trauma with psychosis: A systematic review.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Normative Modeling of Brain Morphometry in Clinical High Risk for Psychosis.JAMA psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Adolescent Alcohol and Stress Exposure Rewires Key Cortical Neurocircuitry.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Fish oil-derived fatty acids in pregnancy and brain metabolism in middle childhood: results from a randomized controlled trial.Translational psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Deep white-matter tracts link docosahexaenoic acid status to cognitive performance in human adolescents.iScience · 2026Article
- Sleep and participation in extracurricular activities moderate associations between low SES and brain structure and functional connectivity.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- The shifting landscape of brain-wide myelination across the human lifespan.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Maternal and infant gut microbiome.iMeta · 2026Review
- Congenital blindness reduces myelination in human visual cortex.Science advances · 2026Article
- Chronic exposure to LED lighting impairs prefrontal cortex-dependent cognitive functions in adolescent rats.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Cortical and white matter myelination proceed in concert during early infancy.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Charting the human-specific properties of gene expression networks in the infant prefrontal cortex.Science advances · 2026Article
- Developmental human brain connectome from fetal stage to early childhood.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Synaptic pruning, myelination and the emergence of psychiatric disorders in late adolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Genomic approaches for understanding the evolution of the human brain.Nature neuroscience · 2026Review
- Single-cell spatial map of cis-regulatory elements for disease-related genes in the macaque cortex.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Functional changes of precuneus architecture across newborns, infants, and early adolescents.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Review
- Neural signatures of stream segregation from childhood to adulthood.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Neurodevelopmentally rooted epicenters in schizophrenia: sensorimotor-association spatial axis of cortical thickness alterations.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
269 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors at 8 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Nerve myelination facilitates saltatory action potential conduction and exhibits spatiotemporal variation during development associated with the acquisition of behavioral and cognitive maturity. Although human cognitive development is unique, it is not known whether the ontogenetic progression of myelination in the human neocortex is evolutionarily exceptional. In this study, we quantified myelinated axon fiber length density and the expression of myelin-related proteins throughout postnatal life in the somatosensory (areas 3b/3a/1/2), motor (area 4), frontopolar (prefrontal area 10), and visual (areas 17/18) neocortex of chimpanzees (N = 20) and humans (N = 33). Our examination revealed that neocortical myelination is developmentally protracted in humans compared with chimpanzees. In chimpanzees, the density of myelinated axons increased steadily until adult-like levels were achieved at approximately the time of sexual maturity. In contrast, humans displayed slower myelination during childhood, characterized by a delayed period of maturation that extended beyond late adolescence. This comparative research contributes evidence crucial to understanding the evolution of human cognition and behavior, which arises from the unfolding of nervous system development within the context of an enriched cultural environment. Perturbations of normal developmental processes and the decreased expression of myelin-related molecules have been related to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Thus, these species differences suggest that the human-specific shift in the timing of cortical maturation during adolescence may have implications for vulnerability to certain psychiatric disorders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.