“Developmental Mechanisms Underlying the Evolution of Human Cortical Circuits”, Pierre Vanderhaeghen, Franck Polleux2023-02-15 (neuroscience)⁠:

The brain of modern humans has evolved remarkable computational abilities that enable higher cognitive functions. These capacities are tightly linked to an increase in the size and connectivity of the cerebral cortex, which is thought to have resulted from evolutionary changes in the mechanisms of cortical development.

Convergent progress in evolutionary genomics, developmental biology and neuroscience has recently enabled the identification of genomic changes that act as human-specific modifiers of cortical development. These modifiers influence most aspects of corticogenesis, from the timing and complexity of cortical neurogenesis to synaptogenesis and the assembly of cortical circuits.

Mutations of human-specific genetic modifiers of corticogenesis have started to be linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, providing evidence for their physiological relevance and suggesting potential relationships between the evolution of the human brain and its sensitivity to specific diseases.

…The mechanisms underlying the evolutionary emergence of human cognitive abilities constitute a long-standing topic of interest in neuroscience that has recently been transformed by the coalescence of major advances in comparative genomics, developmental neurobiology and new experimental models to study human neural development and function (Box 1).

Here, we present an overview of these recent advances linking developmental mechanisms with the evolution of human neural circuits. We focus on the cerebral cortex, arguably the most complex and among the most divergent of the brain structures of humans, compared with the other species. We first describe some of the most notable qualitative and quantitative differences between the human cortex and the cortex of other animals at the cellular level. We then review the cellular mechanisms that underlie specific features of human corticogenesis and their molecular links with upstream human-specific genomic changes. Finally, we illustrate how the identification of human-specific modifiers of cortical development and function could lead to the discovery of previously unknown aspects of human brain structure, function and disease.