Evolution of prefrontal cortex

In the past, there had been a school of thought that looked at evolution linearly - that is, you could in theory draw a line among mammals as they evolved, and so, say, rodent brains would basically be less evolved primate brains. That turns out not to be true; evolution is much more like a branching tree, and each branch then goes on to develop independently, sometimes in parallel. Some groups of animals such as primates can evolve features of their brains that other groups simply don’t have. And now, with advanced DNA sequencing, scientists have been able to determine which groups of mammals are more closely related than others, and so they’ve figured out that, for instance, tree shrews and flying lemurs are more closely related to primates than rodents are. Here, we speak with Dr. Todd M. Preuss, professor of pathology at Emory University and an associate research professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Dr. Preuss is co-author with Steven Wise of a review article in Neuropsychopharmacology called “Evolution of prefrontal cortex.” Listen in!