From Genes to the Mind: Comparative Genomics and Cognitive Science Elucidating Aspects of the Apes That Make Us Human

Abstract

Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University has a long history in comparative cognitive science, represented by the “Ai Project.” The researchers in this field attempt to answer how and why the human mind evolved, which components of the mind are shared between humans and chimpanzees, and which are uniquely human. Because the human mind and brain functions (a source of mind) are products of evolution, their evolutionary trajectories should be affected by evolutionary constraints, and such signatures should remain in the genome. In the field of genome science, rapid advances in high-throughput technologies have enabled the availability of whole-genome sequences at the individual level. A rapidly advancing discipline related to cognitive science and genomics, termed cognitive genomics, aims to uncover how the genome contributes to the structure and function of the human brain and mind. In particular, cognitive genomics investigates how genomic products, such as the transcriptome, proteome, methylome, and metabolome, relate to brain and cognitive functions in a temporal–spatial manner. We would like to expand this perspective from an evolutionary point of view. Here, we review recent progress in the field of comparative cognitive science, various types of primate genome databases, and chimpanzee whole-genome analysis conducted by our group.