Abstract
Evolution, as we currently understand it, strikes a delicate balance between animals' ancestral history and adaptations to their current niche. Similarities between species are generally considered inherited from a common ancestor whereas observed differences are considered as more recent evolution. Hence comparing species can provide insights into the evolutionary history. Comparative neuroimaging has recently emerged as a novel subdiscipline, which uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify similarities and differences in brain structure and function across species. Whereas invasive histological and molecular techniques are superior in spatial resolution, they are laborious, post-mortem, and oftentimes limited to specific species. Neuroimaging, by comparison, has the advantages of being applicable across species and allows for fast, whole-brain, repeatable, and multi-modal measurements of the structure and function in living brains and post-mortem tissue. In this review, we summarise the current state of the art in comparative anatomy and function of the brain and gather together the main scientific questions to be explored in the future of the fascinating new field of brain evolution derived from comparative neuroimaging.
Highlights
Our brain is the fruit of billions of years of evolution
Comparative neuroimaging has recently emerged as a novel subdiscipline, which uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify similarities and differences in brain structure and function across species
We summarise the emerging field of MRI-based neuroimaging of the primate brain evolution as well as gather the main scientific questions to be explored in the future
Summary
Similarities between species are generally considered inherited from a common ancestor whereas observed differences are considered as more recent evolution. Comparing species can provide insights into the evolutionary history. Comparative neuroimaging has recently emerged as a novel subdiscipline, which uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify similarities and differences in brain structure and function across species. Neuroimaging, by comparison, has the advantages of being applicable across species and allows for fast, whole-brain, repeatable, and multi-modal measurements of the structure and function in living brains and post-mortem tissue. We summarise the current state of the art in comparative anatomy and function of the brain and gather together the main scientific questions to be explored in the future of the fascinating new field of brain evolution derived from comparative neuroimaging
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