ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Synaptogenesis and development of pyramidal neuron dendritic morphology in the chimpanzee neocortex resembles humans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers.
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84 citing papers in PubMed, 137 citations in OpenAlex.
- Metabolism Controls the Timing of Human Brain Development and Maturation.Journal of inherited metabolic disease · 2026Review
- Human-specific multicopy gene FRMPD2 promotes synapse formation via recruitment of neuroligin 1.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The effect of human-specific genetic variants on neuronal spinogenesis.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Review
- Connectome-based symptom mapping and in silico related gene expression in children with autism and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Altricial brains and the evolution of infant vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Human CLOCK enhances neocortical function.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- For All the Primate FANS: Optimized Isolation of Nuclei from Frozen Postmortem Primate Brain for Fluorescence-Assisted Nuclei Sorting (FANS).The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Flexible information-seeking in chimpanzees.Cognition · 2024Article
- Genomic, molecular, and cellular divergence of the human brain.Trends in neurosciences · 2024Review
- Review
- Remodeling of the postsynaptic proteome in male mice and marmosets during synapse development.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The evolution of human altriciality and brain development in comparative context.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Isochronic development of cortical synapses in primates and mice.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Transcription, structure, and organoids translate time across the lifespan of humans and great apes.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- TempShift Reveals the Sequential Development of Human Neocortex and Skewed Developmental Timing of Down Syndrome Brains.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- From fossils to mind.Communications biology · 2023Review
- Distinct developmental trajectories for risky and impulsive decision-making in chimpanzees.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2023Article
- Developmental mechanisms underlying the evolution of human cortical circuits.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2023Review
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 8 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Neocortical development in humans is characterized by an extended period of synaptic proliferation that peaks in mid-childhood, with subsequent pruning through early adulthood, as well as relatively delayed maturation of neuronal arborization in the prefrontal cortex compared with sensorimotor areas. In macaque monkeys, cortical synaptogenesis peaks during early infancy and developmental changes in synapse density and dendritic spines occur synchronously across cortical regions. Thus, relatively prolonged synapse and neuronal maturation in humans might contribute to enhancement of social learning during development and transmission of cultural practices, including language. However, because macaques, which share a last common ancestor with humans ≈ 25 million years ago, have served as the predominant comparative primate model in neurodevelopmental research, the paucity of data from more closely related great apes leaves unresolved when these evolutionary changes in the timing of cortical development became established in the human lineage. To address this question, we used immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy, and Golgi staining to characterize synaptic density and dendritic morphology of pyramidal neurons in primary somatosensory (area 3b), primary motor (area 4), prestriate visual (area 18), and prefrontal (area 10) cortices of developing chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We found that synaptogenesis occurs synchronously across cortical areas, with a peak of synapse density during the juvenile period (3-5 y). Moreover, similar to findings in humans, dendrites of prefrontal pyramidal neurons developed later than sensorimotor areas. These results suggest that evolutionary changes to neocortical development promoting greater neuronal plasticity early in postnatal life preceded the divergence of the human and chimpanzee lineages.
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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.