Weird Science: Chilled monkey brains
An interesting experiment has revealed that our brains our not as different from monkeys’ as we’d probably like to think
Photo: Susie Sparkle in Scotland (Flickr)
Our close simian cousins have long proven to be the perfect model for understanding how our brains function. But despite similar anatomy, several million years of evolution separates our species, and a new method has recently been devised to study what – evolutionarily speaking – defines us as human.
In what can only be described as a weird Kubrick/1984-esque press-ganged midnight rush viewing, Old World monkeys (macaques) and humans were observed and their brains scanned as they watched Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in order to observe physical and behavioural differences between the species triggered by the experience. Why that particular film? It’s based on a 2004 method which established that the film triggered the auditory and visual regions of many individuals’ brains in a similar way. For this study, the science of neurocinematics has been adapted to enable evolutionary, pan-species study.
MRI scans of 24 volunteers (human) watching the same 30-minute clip of the film revealed that the patterns of neural stimulation were very comparable. They then repeated the study with 4 macaques, which, very surprisingly, showed similar brain activity to one another. Focusing on 34 distinct areas, the monkey and human brains were then compared.
It turns out, we both process visual information hierarchically, progressing from initial visualization through successive stages during which we process the complex details of the information we are receiving. The fundamental difference between the two simply seems to be that the expansion of the cerebral cortex in the human brain permits the information to be processed much faster and over a smaller area of the brain. This direct comparison of functionally and spatially similar brain anatomy is apparently a big deal for evolutionary neurologists.
It is hoped that this unusual investigation will provide a clearer view on how the human brain has evolved from a physiological perspective. The purpose of this study can be put down to our curiosity and desire for information resulting from our increased cognitive function, which was caused by evolutionary physiological neural changes. A possible purpose of the work is the conclusion itself: the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake in the absence of purpose. The Big Brother-condoning final generation of civilization strikes again with more coffee stains on the final page of human history.
