Originally published September 22 2005
Brain-building genes still mutating, human brain still evolving
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Two studies completed at the University of Chicago could provide the first scientific evidence that the human brain is evolving, ultimately increasing humans' capacity to grow smarter.
Nature apparently thinks you can, according to two University of Chicago studies providing the first scientific evidence that the human brain is still evolving, a process that may ultimately increase people's capacity to grow smarter.
Two key brain-building genes, which underwent dramatic changes in the past that coincided with huge leaps in human intellectual development, are still undergoing rapid mutations, evolution's way of selecting for new beneficial traits, Bruce Lahn and his University of Chicago colleagues reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"People have this sense that as 21st century humans we've gotten as high as we're going to go,"' said Greg Wray, director of Duke University's center for evolutionary genomics.
Just as major environmental changes in the past, such as dramatic shifts in the climate, food supply or geography, favored the selection of genetic traits that increased survival skills, the pressures on gene selection today come from an increasingly complex and technologically oriented society, said Lahn, a professor of human genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
"Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution -- the growth of brain size and complexity -- is likely still going on," he said.
Evolutionary changes occur when a member of a species experiences a mutation in a gene that gives him a new skill, like running faster, seeing farther or thinking better.
That's what happened to the microcephalin mutation, which now occurs in 70 percent of all people, and the ASPM gene mutation, which so far has spread to 30 percent of the world's people.
Researchers have learned over the last two decades that genes and the environment work together -- genes provide for a range of possible outcomes and the environment determines which specific outcome is likely to occur.
The microcephalin and ASPM genes played a big role in expanding the size of the brain.
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