"We know very, very little about how our brains differ from other animals', except that our brains are bigger." "Neuroscience seems really reluctant to approach the question of what it is about our brains that makes us human, and John is doing exactly that," says Todd Preuss, a neuroanatomist and anthropologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Allman, 66, compares the brains of people and other animals to gain insight into the evolution of human behavior. These spindle-shaped brain cells, called von Economo neurons-named for the man who first described them-are found only in human beings, great apes and a handful of other notably gregarious creatures. Taking well over an hour, he carved off 136 paper-thin sections.Īllman was searching for a peculiar kind of brain cell that he suspects is a key to how the African elephant-like a human being-manages to stay attuned to the ever-shifting nuances of social interplay. Allman carefully sliced it using the laboratory equivalent of a deli meat cutter. Preserved in formaldehyde, it looked like half a pancake, frozen solid on a misting bed of dry ice. About a dozen years after Simba died at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, a half-inch slab of her yellowish, wrinkled, basketball-size brain was laid out before John Allman, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. There was little chance of missing the elephant in the room.
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