ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
The heritability of chimpanzee and human brain asymmetry.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mapping cortical brain asymmetry in 17,141 healthy individuals worldwide via the ENIGMA Consortium.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Pooled it
- Heritability of gray matter volume and asymmetry in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and their association to cognitive abilities and tool use.Brain structure & function · 2025Article
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- Exploring Brain Size Asymmetry and Its Relationship with Predation Risk Among Chinese Anurans.Biology · 2025Article
- A multiscale characterization of cortical shape asymmetries in early psychosis.Brain communications · 2024Article
- Comparative physiological anthropogeny: exploring molecular underpinnings of distinctly human phenotypes.Physiological reviews · 2023Review
- Greater variability in rhesus macaque (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- Neuroanatomical asymmetries in nonhuman primates in the homologs to Broca's and Wernicke's areas: a mini-review.Emerging topics in life sciences · 2022Article
- Endocranial asymmetry in New World monkeys: a comparative phylogenetic analysis of morphometric data.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- Facial asymmetry tracks genetic diversity amongProceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Heritability in corpus callosum morphology and its association with tool use skill in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Reproducibility in two genetically isolated populations.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2022Article
- Human Connectome Project: heritability of brain volumes in young healthy adults.Experimental brain research · 2021Article
- Reproducibility of leftward planum temporale asymmetries in two genetically isolated populations of chimpanzees (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Greater variability in chimpanzee (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Evolution of brain lateralization: A shared hominid pattern of endocranial asymmetry is much more variable in humans than in great apes.Science advances · 2020Article
- Further evidence of a left hemisphere specialization and genetic basis for tool use skill in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Reproducibility in two genetically isolated populations of apes.Journal of comparative psychology (Washington, D.C. : 1983) · 2019Article
- Heritability of Gray Matter Structural Covariation and Tool Use Skills in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): A Source-Based Morphometry and Quantitative Genetic Analysis.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2019Article
- The heritability of chimpanzee and human brain asymmetry.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Human brains are markedly asymmetric in structure and lateralized in function, which suggests a relationship between these two properties. The brains of other closely related primates, such as chimpanzees, show similar patterns of asymmetry, but to a lesser degree, indicating an increase in anatomical and functional asymmetry during hominin evolution. We analysed the heritability of cerebral asymmetry in chimpanzees and humans using classic morphometrics, geometric morphometrics, and quantitative genetic techniques. In our analyses, we separated directional asymmetry and fluctuating asymmetry (FA), which is indicative of environmental influences during development. We show that directional patterns of asymmetry, those that are consistently present in most individuals in a population, do not have significant heritability when measured through simple linear metrics, but they have marginally significant heritability in humans when assessed through three-dimensional configurations of landmarks that reflect variation in the size, position, and orientation of different cortical regions with respect to each other. Furthermore, genetic correlations between left and right hemispheres are substantially lower in humans than in chimpanzees, which points to a relatively stronger environmental influence on left-right differences in humans. We also show that the level of FA has significant heritability in both species in some regions of the cerebral cortex. This suggests that brain responsiveness to environmental influences, which may reflect neural plasticity, has genetic bases in both species. These results have implications for the evolvability of brain asymmetry and plasticity among humans and our close relatives.
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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.