Until recently most neuroscientists agreed with Darwin’s assumption in 1871 that human beings are just “big-brained apes”, a confusion founded on the apparent external similarities in human brain structure to other mammals.
Psychologist David Premack of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia explains in the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that since the late 1990s research challenges that notion, by revealing microscopic features unique to human brains. These studies have found “enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not found in any animal.”
“One such finding, he added, involved a newfound type of neuron, or brain cell, that’s far more numerous and larger in humans than in any of their ape relatives. Called von Economo neurons, these cells are particularly prevalent in brain regions dealing with social emotions such as empathy, guilt and embarrassment”, Premack wrote.
This finding could also supports the common observation that the stage of adolescence, characteristic of human transformation towards emotional and social maturity, does not exist among any animal species.
“A major difference is that animal behaviours appear to be mainly adaptations focused on a single goal such as food-seeking”, he wrote, “whereas human behaviours have an infinite number of goals. Such disparities are consistent with the observed differences in brain structure; the challenge is to understand the function of these cellular-level differences”, he wrote.
From this new perspective demonstrating more differences than similarities between human kind and other animal species, could we not begin to consider humanity has a kingdom on its own? The leap of evolution from animals to human beings, albeit less visible in body shape, would be neuropsychologically, as important as the leap separating animals from plants and plants from minerals.
