Communications Biology (Jan 2025)

Cortical areas associated to higher cognition drove primate brain evolution

  • Marina Melchionna,
  • Silvia Castiglione,
  • Giorgia Girardi,
  • Antonio Profico,
  • Alessandro Mondanaro,
  • Gabriele Sansalone,
  • Narimane Chatar,
  • Alejandro Pérez Ramos,
  • Marcos Fernández-Monescillo,
  • Carmela Serio,
  • Luca Pandolfi,
  • Jacob Dembitzer,
  • Mirko Di Febbraro,
  • Marta Michelle Caliendo,
  • Alessia Di Costanzo,
  • Linda Morvillo,
  • Antonella Esposito,
  • Pasquale Raia

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07505-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

Read online

Abstract Although intense research effort is seeking to address which brain areas fire and connect to each other to produce complex behaviors in a few living primates, little is known about their evolution, and which brain areas or facets of cognition were favored by natural selection. By developing statistical tools to study the evolution of the brain cortex at the fine scale, we found that rapid cortical expansion in the prefrontal region took place early on during the evolution of primates. In anthropoids, fast-expanding cortical areas extended to the posterior parietal cortex. In Homo, further expansion affected the medial temporal lobe and the posteroinferior region of the parietal lobe. Collectively, the fast-expanding cortical areas in anthropoids are known to form a brain network producing mind reading abilities and other higher-order cognitive functions. These results indicate that pursuing complex cognition drove the evolution of Primate brains.