Yesterday morning the BBC ran a report on animal research being conducted at the University of Oxford. Later the Guardian newspaper reported in more detail on one of the studies mentioned in the BBC report, which used two different MRI scanning techniques to examine in both humans and macaques the functional relationship between different areas within a brain region known as the human ventrolateral frontal cortex (vlFC) and other regions of the brain. This work is important as the vIFC is known to play a very important role in language and decision making, but previous studies could not identify physiological differences between the vIFC region of humans and monkeys that would explain the why human linguistic abilities and decision making are so superior to that of macaques (other cognitive abilities, such as processing of visual information, are very similar between the two species). What they found was that while most of the vIFC regions and the connections between these and other parts of the brain were shared by both macaques and humans, there were interesting differences. The connections from vIFC regions involved in hearing were different - being functionally linked to areas associated with language processing in humans but not in macaques. They also identified a region -the lateral frontal pole (PFL) - in humans, but it and its functional connections to other brain regions were absent in macaques. Previous studies in humans and macaques had led scientists to suggest that the PFL is involved in evaluating decisions after they have been made, and this new study greatly strengthens this hypothesis. Its a very interesting discovery that could help the development of new therapies for psychiatric disorders. theguardian/science/2014/jan/28/grass-greener-brain-research-lateral-frontal-pole Original paper at: download.cell/images/edimages/neuron/iti/1-s2.0-S0896627313010805-main.pdf
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 10:45:44 +0000
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