Multidisciplinary researchers explore the origins of humanity and the many facets of what makes us human.
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Humans live in a world of ideas—born in the brain, shared through language, accumulated in culture across generations, and made reality. From the first flaked stone tools to the building of shelters, from figurative and symbolic art to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination—an “idea organ” that has transformed both our species and the planet itself. The distinct biology of the…
The extraordinary abilities of the cerebral cortex are central to what sets humans apart from other species. A defining feature of the cortex is its organization along a sensorimotor-to-association (S–A) axis, extending from primary sensorimotor areas to transmodal association regions that support abstract cognition. This axis varies across species and has been profoundly remodeled in humans.…
Human brain expansion is often discussed in terms of the genetic and molecular innovations that drove uniquely human cognitive abilities. Yet evolution is fundamentally a process of tradeoffs. Disproportionate expansion of forebrain structures increases the demands placed on long-range connectivity, metabolism, and cellular maintenance, imposing costs that scale with brain size. Alex Pollen,…
Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the UCSF Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center, examines what neurodegenerative disease reveals about the neural basis of creativity and the social mind. Research in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) shows that visual creativity is not rare: a subset of patients—particularly those with left anterior temporal degeneration—develop new or intensified artistic…
From stone tools and shelters to symbolic art and abstract thought, human history is shaped by a brain built to form and share ideas. Joseph Paradiso, Professor in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, explores what comes next after the early visions of ubiquitous computing have largely arrived in today’s Internet of Things world, where low-power sensors and interfaces are embedded in…
A fundamental question in biology is: how did humans acquire their unique characteristics? What allows us to stand upright, while our primate ancestors walked on all fours? What brain alterations drove our increased intelligence and allowed us to perceive our own mortality? One of the mechanisms that has been hypothesized to be involved is changes in gene expression elicited by nucleotide…
Humans excel at transmitting ideas, skills, and knowledge across generations, and at building on those competencies in a cumulative manner. James Rilling, Professor of Psychology at Emory University, explores how the transmission of our cumulative culture is assumed to depend on both language and mental perspective-taking, or theory of mind. If humans have specialized abilities in these domains,…
The distinct biology of the human brain, scaffolded by language and culture, allows ideas to be formed, named, shared, and accumulated across generations. Dean Falk, Professor of Anthropology, Florida State University, explains how paleoneurologists study the brains of human ancestors by producing endocasts from fossilized skulls and measuring cranial capacities. Dated skulls indicate brain size…
Our brains are engines of imagination—an “idea organ” that has transformed both our species and the planet. Genevieve Konopka, Chair of the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, asks how genes drive the development of the cell types that build the human brain and give rise to cognition, and how cognitive behavior emerges from evolutionarily adapted genomic…
Humans live in a world of ideas—born in the brain, shared through language, accumulated in culture across generations, and made reality. From the first flaked stone tools to the building of shelters, from figurative and symbolic art to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination—an “idea organ” that has transformed both our species and the planet itself. The distinct biology of the…
