Little smart critters..🪰🐝🐜 Cognitive primitives of the insect brain: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

‘The Fox, the Shrew, and You: How Brains Evolved,’ an excerpt www.thetransmitter.org/evolution/th...

Chimpanzee calls trigger unique brain activity in humans, revealing shared vocal processing skills phys.org/news/2025-12...

'Making sense of vertebrate senses from a neural crest and cranial placode evo-devo perspective' by Brittany Edens & Marianne Bronner www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Cortical evolution is hard because it sits at the intersection of: developmental biology systems neuroscience genomics comparative anatomy 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 #𝗖𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 Come join our conference! Bilbao, June 15-17 2026

Third, 𝘄𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀. Much of what we call “fundamental” may simply reflect rodent biology. Comparative neurobiology forces us to re-evaluate what is truly conserved, 𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭. #CorticalEvolution2026

Second, ᴅᴇᴠᴇʟᴏᴘᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇᴠᴏʟᴜᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀʀᴇ ɪɴꜱᴇᴘᴀʀᴀʙʟᴇ ⛓️. Small changes in progenitor behavior, timing, or lineage relationships can scale into large architectural differences. The difficulty is linking molecular changes to macroscopic structure.

First, the cortex changes along multiple axes at once: size, folding, cell-type diversity, connectivity, developmental timing. 𝙉𝙤 𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙚 𝙫𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨. Expansion alone is not the answer. #CorticalEvolution2026

𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 sounds straightforward: compare species, identify differences, explain them. In reality, it 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. 𝘞𝘩𝘺? #CorticalEvolution2026

We review studies showing that when brain areas face similar computational demands in social and non-social context, they perform the same computations. We argue that exaptation (repurposing of traits for new functions) played a key role in brain evolution.

Computational origins of cortical brain circuits for social cognition — a Perspective article by Ali Mahmoodi & Matthew F. S. Rushworth @alimahmoodi.bsky.social #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's important to note that when discussing brain structure-function relationships across scales, that the definition of function changes with scale. Keep it straight! @sbe.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Neuroscience has a species problem www.thetransmitter.org/animal-model...

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗼. To bring together evolutionary, developmental and systems perspectives and to rethink where the field is going next. June 15–17, 2026 Spain #CorticalEvolution2026

Importantly, cortical evolution is not just about the past. Many vulnerabilities of the human brain, from developmental disorders to psychiatric disease, may be inseparable from the evolutionary trajectories that shaped cortical expansion and complexity.

We now describe the cortex in extraordinary detail: cell types, layers, gene expression, developmental programs. Yet description alone doesn’t explain why the cortex is built the way it is — or why evolution took such different paths in different lineages. #CorticalEvolution2026

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘄? Because many of the biggest open questions in neuroscience still revolve around the cerebral cortex — how it emerged, expanded, diversified, and why it differs so much across species. #CorticalEvolution2026

" This study provides the first quantitative evidence for the evolution of a kiwi-like niche for a #bird outside New Zealand, and emphasizes the remarkable diversity of #avian lifestyles lost due to #anthropogenic impact..." ICB's Sara Citron et al doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

CORTICAL EVOLUTION CONFERENCE June 15-17, 2026 Organizers: Verónica Martínez Cerdeño, Fernando García Moreno, Elena Vecino, and Stephen Noctor. ventricular.org/corticalevol...

“A bird with a 10-gram brain is doing pretty much the same as a chimp with a 400-gram brain,” said Onur Güntürkün, who studies brain structures at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. “How is it possible?”

Anyone in the #Lethbridge area, I will be giving a public talk this week to address the question I get the most: Why study bird brains? I will discuss how studying bird brains led to some major discoveries and helps us understand bird behaviour. #yql #birds #Alberta www.sacpa.ca/why-study-bi...

🤩 Join us for the next TIBBE seminar: Comparative databasing January 28, 3–4pm UTC This event hosts an outstanding neuroscientist & biologist particularly interested in insect brains who will present his work, followed by an interactive discussion with the audience: www.crowdcast.io/c/comparativ...

Stanley Heinz on comparing insect connectomes

Stanley Heinz explains the amazing comparative database insectbraindb.org

What a #brainless animal can teach us about behavioral control #ikerbasque @zubsaila.bsky.social www.achucarro.org/news/2026-01...

A new study shows that gut microbes from large-brained primates can boost brain activity and learning pathways. This suggests our microbiome may have helped shape human intelligence through evolution. 🧪 #LifeScience #GutHealth #Research #Neuroscience

Ending my explainer 🧵 with a huge thank you to fab team of authors Barbara Molz, Mikel Lana Alberro, Else Eising, Dick Schijven, @gokberkalagoz.bsky.social, & @clydefrancks.bsky.social, as well as amazing @ukbiobank.bsky.social initiative, without which none of this research would be possible. 16/16

We conclude our paper with some recommendations for future work in this area, including the need to broaden ancestral diversity in biobanking efforts & to develop methods that can better tease apart how multiple evolutionary changes with modest effect sizes interact to shape human biology. 15/n

Our findings resonate with important prior work by @kuhlwilm.bsky.social & @cedricboeckx.bsky.social which argued that evolution of human-specific traits involved cumulative changes across gene networks, encompassing not only fixed sites but also variants at high frequency in present-day humans.14/n

Such approaches will likely never have enough power for systematic “phenome-wide” scans of archaic variant effects across every available trait. Plus, population biobanks seldom collect info on some of the most pertinent traits for understanding human origins e.g. measures of language skills. 13/n

Some key caveats. Even if a biobank includes half a million people, rarity of individuals with archaic variants can limit sample size, preclude formal statistical analyses & make it hard to exclude more moderate effects. Meta-analyses across biobanks & normative modeling may help resolve this...12/n

A substantial proportion of people with archaic TKTL1 had college/university degrees, arguing against big impacts on cognition. The results show that the sometimes dramatic effects seen in lab-based experiments on evolutionary variants may not be a guide to real-world impacts in living humans. 11/n

62 people in UK Biobank have archaic TKTL1. 16 are male & (since TKTL1 is on chromosome X) completely lack the human-specific allele. With available neuroimaging data, we looked for effects of carrying archaic TKTL1 on frontal brain structure. No extreme differences were detected even in males. 10/n

We also studied a variant of special interest in the TKTL1 gene. Big effects in animal models, gene-edited organoids & human fetal brain knockouts had led to the idea that the human TKTL1 variant enhanced generation of neurons in frontal brain & so influenced our cognitive/behavioural evolution. 9/n

We zeroed in on one of the variants with largest number of carriers; in SSH2, a gene linked to development of brain cells, among other functions. Examining a range of pre-selected health, psychiatric & cognitive traits in 19 unrelated carriers, we saw no clear consequence of having archaic SSH2. 8/n

On screening exomes of ~455k people in @ukbiobank.bsky.social, a population resource of healthy adults in the UK, we found that for many supposedly fixed evolutionary changes in protein coding (17 of 37 that could be tested) at least a few living individuals had the archaic version of the gene. 7/n

Research suggests DNA variants with relatively recent origins in our evolution may be especially relevant for health outcomes. Scanning hundreds of thousands of people in a biobank, we can identify individuals with very rare archaic alleles & directly observe real-world effects in living humans. 6/n

Still, it remains challenging to evaluate the roles individual human-specific DNA changes played (if any) in our evolutionary story. To complement experimental lab-based studies, we sought insights from an alternative source: searching large-scale biobanks for people who carry archaic variants. 5/n

Since proteins make up much of the molecular machinery of cells, with diverse roles in development & functions of our bodies, the protein-coding evolutionary changes became a big focus of research e.g. by “humanizing” animal models or inserting archaic alleles into human tissue grown in the lab. 4/n

This paleogenomic breakthrough uncovered thousands of derived DNA changes that had apparently spread to become “fixed” (i.e. unvarying) in modern humans after separation from ancestor of Neanderthals & Denisovans. Fewer than a hundred were substitutions predicted to alter structures of proteins. 3/n

It’s over a decade since a virtually complete Neanderthal genome sequence was first reported. Living humans aren’t direct descendants of Neanderthals but we shared a common ancestor ~600kya. Comparing modern/archaic genomes => catalogues of all the DNA changes that arose uniquely on our lineage. 2/n

While stories of singular DNA changes that drove evolution of human brain/behaviour remain seductive, advances across multiple fields of biology cast doubt on such simplistic narratives of our origins. A new paper from my lab shows how biobanks may speak to this fundamental question.🧪 Explainer🧵👇1/n

Model organisms promise insights into the human brain only if they’re representative. This new paper argues that convenience-driven choices weaken extrapolation in neuroscience, and highlights growing calls for comparative, evolution-informed approaches. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Microbes may hold the key to brain evolution phys.org/news/2026-01...

2026. Microbes may hold the key to brain evolution phys.org/news/2026-01...

Last year's #DarwinDayLecture was given by none other than our Vice President and physicist @jimalkhalili.bsky.social, who dived into the evolution of the human brain – perhaps one of the most complex things in the universe! You can watch it on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9QK...

This book is a wonderful, synthetic and richly illustrated journey through the natural history of the vertebrate brain 🤩 A big thank you to the authors 🙏 "A major theme in the evolution of the telencephalon has been the emergence of novel pathways... 1/2

We’re delighted to see this out today! Latest work from the lab reveals insights into the evolution of brain immunity and the developmental and evolutionary plasticity of lymphatic endothelial cells. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As part of this semester's Comparative Neuroanatomy class, we are dissecting shark brains! Everyone loves shark week with Dr. A 🦈. Share your favorite shark facts with the class! Here are pictures of me and blurry sharks

Very happy for this @ejneuroscience.bsky.social editorial on the importance of diverse research animals in neuroscience. We make the case that embracing a plurality of model organisms enriches the field and accelerates both basic and translational research. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...