Research report 2022 - Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
How genetic variants shaped the structure of the human brain over evolutionary history
Authors
Molz, Barbara; Alagöz, Gökberk
Departments
Abteilung „Language & Genetics“
Summary
Human brain anatomy has undergone distinct changes during hominin evolution, accompanied by the emergence of complex cognitive functions. Despite recent advances in comparative genomics, we still have only limited insight into how genetic factors contributed to this reshaping of the brain. We addressed the question by using large-scale neuroimaging genomic data from present-day humans to reveal associations between various evolutionary annotations of the human genome and aspects of cortical anatomy and connectivity, spanning a range of periods over the last 30 million years.