A study published Monday shows that the parts of the human brain, which grew most in infancy and childhood, the brain are almost identical, regions, that most people have changed compared to primates.
The discovery made the researchers attempting to understand the development of abnormal brain of premature babies and the long term effects of prematurity on the development of the brain.
Terrie Indians, Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, and principal author of the study, said that the number of babies born before the term has increased in the United States steadily, to reach 12 percent of all births.
Scientists at the Washington University School of medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, said that ahead of time a greater risk of problems in learning deficit of attention, behavioural and cognitive impairment confronted newborns.
"This study and the data that we collect will now can with very powerful tools for understanding what goes wrong, structurally in a variety of diseases of childhood, sequelae of premature birth read us conditions such as Autism, attention deficit disorder or a disability," said Indians.
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The researchers in their study called surface reconstruction uses a technique to compare regions and structures in the brain are different.
Researchers have figured out, everything through the analysis of scans of the brains of 12 newborn term and compared to the scans of 12 young healthy adults, the cerebral cortex increased in unevenly.
One-fourth to one-third of the enlarged cortex Autour two times more than the other cortical areas during normal development of the brain.
The results, published in the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, show "Footprint of the evolution of the human brain", because those are the rapid development of the brain the more, when you compare the human brain to primates. »
Strong growth areas were connected to the brink of mental function as language and reasoning and properties, the unique human people.
David van Essen, one of the authors of the study, said that earlier studies which showed in many regions of strong growth of the brain "are among the people due to the recent evolutionary changes." "developed", that the human brain is much more than any other primates
Van Essen was the hypothesis that physical growth full of high-growth regions may be delayed slightly so that they themselves are characterized the first experience of life.
Indian writes, that some regions of the brain could more quickly develop evolutionary reasons in young children.
The part of the brain responsible for vision, which for a baby to his mother while the care is required, developed such as early, while less important brain later functions in the first years of life.