Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Sci Adv. 2024 Aug 30;10(35):eado2733. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ado2733. Epub 2024 Aug 28.
Aging is associated with progressive gray matter loss in the brain. This spatially specific, morphological change over the life span in humans is also found in chimpanzees, and the comparison between these great ape species provides a unique evolutionary perspective on human brain aging. Here, we present a data-driven, comparative framework to explore the relationship between gray matter atrophy with age and recent cerebral expansion in the phylogeny of chimpanzees and humans. In humans, we show a positive relationship between cerebral aging and cortical expansion, whereas no such relationship was found in chimpanzees. This human-specific association between strong aging effects and large relative cortical expansion is particularly present in higher-order cognitive regions of the ventral prefrontal cortex and supports the "last-in-first-out" hypothesis for brain maturation in recent evolutionary development of human faculties.
衰老是与大脑中的灰质逐渐丧失有关的。这种在人类一生中具有空间特异性的形态变化也存在于黑猩猩中，对这些大型猿类物种的比较为人类大脑衰老提供了独特的进化视角。在这里，我们提出了一个数据驱动的比较框架，以探索黑猩猩和人类的系统发育中灰质萎缩与年龄以及最近大脑扩张之间的关系。在人类中，我们发现大脑衰老与皮质扩张之间存在正相关关系，而在黑猩猩中则没有发现这种关系。这种人类特有的强衰老效应与相对较大的皮质扩张之间的关联在腹侧前额叶皮层等高级认知区域尤为明显，支持了大脑成熟的“后进先出”假说，即人类在最近的进化发展中出现了大脑功能的发展。
