This is really unexpected and also unusual. It is is a huge
difference and it clearly allows the brain to develop exceptional
complexity in its youth and adolescence. That this would be markedly
different tells us that it is very important.
Thus we receive guidance that human development needs to be properly
exploited as part of general education. A wide range of mental
exercises need to be taught and practiced under supervision by the
educational establishment. Until now, all this has been haphazard.
We need to do much better than that. At present, the best and
brightest devise work arounds that help them only.
Since it is a slow grow out one wants to maintain learning pressure
as we do for the fortunate few.
Human
Brains Develop Wiring Slowly, Differing from Chimpanzees
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 27, 2012
Research
comparing brain development in humans and our closest nonhuman
primate relatives, chimpanzees, reveals how quickly myelin in the
cerebral cortex grows, shedding light on the evolution of
human cognitive development and the vulnerability of humans
to psychiatric disorders, a GW professor finds.
Myelin is the fatty
insulation surrounding axon connections of the brain.
Recent research by
Chet Sherwood, associate professor of anthropology in Columbian
College of Arts and Sciences, along with Daniel Miller, a former GW
graduate student, and other colleagues, reveals this key difference
in brain development between human and chimpanzee.
In
humans, myelin develops slowly during childhood, followed
by a delayed period of maturity beyond adolescence and into early
adulthood. In contrast, in chimpanzees, the development of myelin
already starts at a relatively more mature level at birth and ceases
development long before puberty.
"These
observations indicate that a marked delay in the development schedule
of the human neocortex may play an important role in the growth of
connections that contribute to our species-specific cognitive
abilities," wrote Dr. Sherwood and co-authors.
The developmental
timing of myelination is important because it establishes
connectivity among parts of the growing brain, which is essential to
higher-order cognitive functions, such as decision-making and
emotional regulation.
These cognitive
functions are known to mature relatively late in humans, after the
time of adolescence.
Also,
this period of persistent myelin development
during early adulthood in humans is a time of
particular vulnerability to neuropsychiatric diseases, including
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.
The findings were
recently published in the September 24th edition Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In the article, Dr. Sherwood and
co-authors write that the development of myelin from birth to
adulthood in humans is protracted in comparison to chimpanzees.
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