Human-specific network may have evolved to strengthen social
communication
(July 15, 2015) Researchers
at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have found that key parts of the
human brain network that give us the power to control and redirect our
attention—a core cognitive ability—may be unique to humans. The research, which
was published in the July 13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, suggests that the network may have evolved in response to
increasingly complex social cues.
“The human brain is powerful, but even it cannot make sense
of the entire sum of stimuli that bombard our senses,” said Vincent P. Ferrera,
PhD, the study’s senior author. Dr. Ferrera is a principal investigator at
Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Bran Behavior Institute and associate
professor in the department of neuroscience (in psychiatry) at CUMC. “Instead,
it selects and prioritizes information based on what is needed at any given
moment—this is called attention. And while attention is a fundamental
characteristic of human cognition, and something that we use all the time, the
underlying brain circuits that give us this ability remain largely unclear.”
In order to better understand these circuits, the authors
compared the brains of primate and human subjects during a specific
attention-seeking task. In so doing, they uncovered key clues about these
so-called ‘attention networks’: how they evolved and how they underlie human
cognitive abilities—and are already using this information to test what role
they may play in psychiatric disorders.