Unusual Neuron Could Explain the Smartest Species

People have it, elephants have it, even killer whales have it

By M. Farbman Posted 05.29.2009 at 11:29 am 2 Comments

Killer Whales NOAA/Robert Pittman

A neuroscientist carves up brains to investigate the presence of unique brain cells found only in humans, primates, elephants and a handful of marine mammals -- species that are characterized by large brains, a long childhood spent learning from their elders, and sophisticated social interaction, reports Smithsonian.

In his Caltech lab, John Allman slices off the thinnest slivers of an elephant's brain, looking for the presence of von Economo neurons -- and possibly a glimpse into the evolution of human behavior.

Discovered in 1881, von Economo neurons are only recently being linked to "social intelligence." The long cells are four times the size of most others in the brain, and have only a single dendrite -- compared to other brain cells have have several. They reside in areas of the brain that are especially active when people experience emotion and which appear to be important in "self-monitoring." Allman theorizes that the cells' length indicates that they are especially fast, and so aid communication from "the brain's social hot spots" to the rest of the brain.

Previous Article: Could Violent Asteroid Bombardment Give Rise to New Life?

Next Article: British Chef Plays with the Psychological Taste of Words to Enhance Flavor

Want to learn more about breakthroughs in electronics, medicine, nanotech, and more?
Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

2 Comments

Link to this comment

Xspot

from neverland

05/29/09 at 7:46 pm

From the evolutionary point of view, people dramatically progressed in the past decades, newborn children appears to be more intelligent than previous generations.
The question is how such changes alter our bodies. I wonder if and how it affects the development of intelligence to other animal species such as dogs, cats and other animals that are adapted to our society, are they also increasingly intelligent because of our development or are they following their independent evolutionary paths.

Link to this comment

cafenelu

06/03/09 at 2:36 am

.
.
Xspot,

is it that the brains are changing for better for our children or is it that our children get easy access to quality information at an earlier age than we did?...

what if our brains are simply some sort of computers configurable by the information we have access to until a certain age or during all our life?

it might be that we simply had no access to Internet and stuff during our childhood. consider children with various social backgrounds when judging this, even the feral children...

best wishes!