{"id":207315,"date":"2025-02-27T02:04:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T08:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/rapidly-evolving-dna-may-explain-human-brain-complexity"},"modified":"2025-02-27T02:04:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T08:04:40","slug":"rapidly-evolving-dna-may-explain-human-brain-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/rapidly-evolving-dna-may-explain-human-brain-complexity","title":{"rendered":"Rapidly Evolving DNA May Explain Human Brain Complexity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rapidly-evolving-dna-may-explain-human-brain-complexity.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary: <\/strong>A new study reveals that human accelerated regions (HARs)\u2014segments of DNA that evolved much faster than expected\u2014may be key to the brain\u2019s advanced cognitive abilities. Researchers compared human and chimpanzee neurons and found that HARs drive the growth of multiple neural projections, which enhance communication between brain cells.<\/p>\n<p>When human HARs were introduced into chimp neurons, they also grew more projections, suggesting a direct link between HARs and neural complexity. However, these same genetic changes may also contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, highlighting the delicate balance of human brain evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: A new study reveals that human accelerated regions (HARs)\u2014segments of DNA that evolved much faster than expected\u2014may be key to the brain\u2019s advanced cognitive abilities. Researchers compared human and chimpanzee neurons and found that HARs drive the growth of multiple neural projections, which enhance communication between brain cells. When human HARs were introduced into [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}