MALI: Chimpanzees are intelligent animals capable of working with tools and solving problems but regardless of how smart the chimps are, their brain power pales when compared to that of humans.
Several factors make the human brain superior to that of chimps but findings of a new research reveal this also has something to do with our brains being more responsive to environmental changes compared with the chimps’ brains.
In a new study published in the in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 16, researchers conducted an analysis of 218 human brains and 206 chimpanzee brains and found that compared to the chimp’s brain, the human brain exhibits more plasticity, or the brain’s tendency to change in structure, size and shape in response to external factors.
To determine how genetics may shape the brain, the researchers examined the brains of the two species using MRI scans. The researchers likewise used information from detailed family trees of chimps to measure the similarity in brains of genetically related individuals. MRI scans from related humans such as twins were also intentionally chosen for the study.
The findings revealed that closely related individuals in both species have similar brain volumes but this does not hold true in terms of brain structure.
The brain structure in chimps was mostly inherited just like with the brain size but the structure of the human brain was less influenced by genes, which means that the human brain is more susceptible to external influences such as experience, environment and social interactions.