Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Study reveals rapid evolution of common brain neurons may explain autism's high prevalence in humans (CREDIT: Shutterstock) What ...

For decades, large stretches of human DNA were dismissed as "junk" and considered to serve no real purpose. In a new study published in Cell Genomics, researchers at Lund University in Sweden show ...

A new Yale study provides a fuller picture of the genetic changes that shaped the evolution of the human brain, and how the process differed from the evolution of chimpanzees. For the study, published ...

For decades, the human brain was like some evolutionary skyscraper: ancient instincts on the bottom, emotions in the middle, ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.

A study of 225 newborns suggests prenatal estrogen may have played a role in the evolution of larger human brains. Boys with finger-length patterns linked to higher estrogen exposure before birth ...

The placenta and the hormones it produces may have played a crucial role in the evolution of the human brain, while also leading to the behavioral traits that have made human societies able to thrive ...

How did humans get such big brains – the answer might lie in the gut. A recent study from Northwestern University in the US is the first to show that gut microbes from different animals can shape ...

The microorganisms in our gastrointestinal tract–the gut microbiome can exert a profound influence on the human body, and scientists are learning more about exactly how certain microbes can impact us.

What unique processes conspire to create a healthy, functional human brain? How can we be so genetically similar to, say, chimpanzees, and yet be light-years more sophisticated cognitively and ...

The world never runs out of mysteries, but as adults we just stop paying attention to them. That is why reading through this ...

Humans, who are classified among the five great apes, are closest genetically, i.e., DNA similarity, to chimpanzees (98.8%-99%) and bonobos (98.8%). [Blueringmedia ...