Humans owe our impressive intellect to our large brains, which are unusually sophisticated thanks to evolution. The first surge in our brain size occurred between 2 million and 800,000 years ago, when ...

Until Homo floresiensis was discovered, scientists assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains. Via a process called encephalization, human brains evolved ...

Human brains have been steadily growing through the decades, and that may be lowering the risk of dementia. A new study out of UC Davis Health found that people born in the 1970s had brain volumes ...

A new study in the lab of Jason Stein, Ph.D., modeled brain development in a dish to identify cells and genes that influence ...

Modern humans, Neanderthals, and other recent relatives on our human family tree evolved bigger brains much more rapidly than earlier species, a new study of human brain evolution has found. The study ...

Scientists have long tried to understand the human brain by comparing it to other primates. Researchers are still trying to understand what makes our brain different to our closest relatives. Our ...

An international research team involving the German Primate Center—Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ), Hannover ...

New research has pinpointed the likely time in prehistory when humans first began to speak. Analysis by British archaeologist Steven Mithen suggests that early humans first developed rudimentary ...

Researchers have used a new human reference genome, which includes many duplicated and repeat sequences left out of the original human genome draft, to identify genes that make the human brain ...