Aging brains are different in humans and chimpanzees; Evolution of human longevity led to both a large brain and brain shrinkage

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2011) — Brains shrink in humans, potentially causing a number of health problems and mental illnesses as people age, but do they shrink to the same extent in the closest living relatives to humans--the chimpanzees?

New research says no, making the extreme amount of brain shrinkage resulting from normal aging in humans unique.

Chet Sherwood, an anthropologist at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a team of scientists from seven other U.S. universities put forward the question to see if comparable data on the effects of aging could be found in chimpanzees. Such data on regional brain volumes in chimpanzees was not available, until now.

The researchers -- anthropologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, and veterinary professionals -- used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the space occupied by various brain structures in adult humans and chimpanzees, including the frontal lobe and the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with short-term and long-term memory.

They found chimpanzees do not display significant loss, or atrophy, in the size of their brains and other internal structures as they age.

Instead, Sherwood and colleagues suggest that as humans evolved the ability to live longer, the result was a "high degree of brain degeneration" as people get older.

"We were most surprised that chimpanzees, who are separated from humans by only 6-8 million years of independent evolution, did not more closely resemble the human pattern of brain aging," said Sherwood. "It was already known that macaque monkeys, separated from humans by about 30 million years, do not show humanlike, widespread brain atrophy in aging."

The current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the findings. The National Science Foundation (NSF) partially funded the research.

Because humans and chimpanzees grow, develop and age on different schedules, the study compared humans from age 22 to 88 and chimpanzees from age 10 to 51. For both species, this encompassed the whole adult lifespan under natural conditions. Humans have a longer lifespan than chimpanzees. In the wild, the lifespan of chimpanzees is about 45 at the oldest. With medical care in captivity, they can live into their 60s. On the other hand, humans without access to modern medical care and who live in traditional hunter-gatherer societies can live to their mid-80s.

The researchers used MRI to measure the volume of the whole brain, total neocortical gray matter, total neocortical white matter, frontal lobe gray matter, frontal lobe white matter and the hippocampus in a cross-sectional sample of 99 chimpanzees and 87 adult humans.

"Traits that distinguish humans from other primates include enlargement of the brain and increased longevity," they write in the report "Aging of the Cerebral Cortex Differs Between Humans and Chimpanzees."

Consequently, they say, humans are unique among animals in being susceptible to certain neuropathologies, such as Alzheimer's disease, in the later stages of life. Even in the absence of disease, however, healthy aging in humans is marked by variable degrees of neural deterioration and cognitive impairment.

"This is an excellent example of research that has implications for societal benefits," said NSF Physical Anthropology Program Officer Kaye Reed. "While Dr. Sherwood and colleagues are interested in the evolutionary significance of brain differences between chimpanzees and humans, the results of this research can be used as a basis to explore degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's, in a medical context."

"This research points to the uniqueness of how severe brain aging is in humans," said Sherwood. "While there are certainly many similarities between humans and other animals in the degenerative processes that occur in the brain, our research indicates that even healthy, normal aging in humans involves more pronounced brain deterioration than in other species.

"Taken together with particular environmental and genetic risk factors, this might help to explain the fact that only humans are vulnerable to developing dementing illnesses like Alzheimer's disease in old age."

Sherwood and colleagues conclude evolution led to both a large brain and a long lifespan in humans. They point out that the benefits of these traits are much debated, but they surmise it might be related to an increased reliance on social learning of skills.

"As a result, we suggest that the high energy cost of a large brain in humans leads to more wear and tear that cannot be easily repaired because most neurons are not renewed," said Sherwood. "As a consequence, human brains become more vulnerable to degeneration towards the later stages of life."

In addition to NSF, the National Institutes of Health, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Mathers Foundation and a Yerkes Center Grant supported the research.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by National Science Foundation.

Journal Reference:

C. C. Sherwood, A. D. Gordon, J. S. Allen, K. A. Phillips, J. M. Erwin, P. R. Hof, W. D. Hopkins. Aging of the cerebral cortex differs between humans and chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1016709108

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The brain's connectome -- from branch to branch

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — The human brain is the most complex of all organs, containing billions of neurons with their corresponding projections, all woven together in a highly complex, three-dimensional web. To date, mapping this vast network posed a practically insurmountable challenge to scientists. Now, however, a research team from the Heidelberg-based Max Planck Institute for Medical Research has developed a method for tackling the mammoth task. Using two new computer programs, KNOSSOS and RESCOP, a group of over 70 students mapped a network of more than 100 neurons -- and they did so faster and more accurately than with previous methods.

With some 70 billion neurons and hundreds of thousands of kilometres of circuits, the human brain is so complex that, for many years, it seemed impossible to reconstruct the network in detail. Each neuron is linked to about a thousand others by means of finely branched projections called dendrites and axons, and communicates with them using electrical signals. The connections between the cells are critical for brain function, so neuroscientists are keen to understand the structure of these circuits -- the connectome -- and to reconstruct it in a three-dimensional map. Since no computer is powerful enough yet for the task, researchers are dependent on the human eye. However, the sheer number of cellular connections contained in even the tiniest fragment of tissue makes the undertaking seem pointless -- unless it is shared among a large number of people.

Moritz Helmstaedter, Kevin L. Briggman and Winfried Denk, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, have now successfully tested this procedure. They developed a special software tool called RESCOP which summarises the results of several annotators to yield an overall picture. In this way, and with the support of over 70 students from Heidelberg University, they reconstructed a network of over 100 neurons from the retina in full detail.

The students used the KNOSSOS software developed by the team in Heidelberg to trace the connections between the neurons. It is no coincidence that the program is named after Crete's legendary palace, renowned for its elaborate labyrinth: "Tracing the connections in the brain is at least as hard as finding your way out of a mythological labyrinth," explains Moritz Helmstaedter.

In order to reconstruct a neural circuit, researchers start by staining the neurons of a section of tissue with heavy metals to make them visible. Using three-dimensional electron microscope images, they start at the cell body and follow the dendrites and axons, marking the branch point nodes on the screen. Then they use the computer to generate a three-dimensional image of the section. In this way, they work their way through the tangle of neurons bit by bit. It is a tedious undertaking: One person working alone with the currently available programs would take at least 30 years to reconstruct a path of 30 centimetres in length. Besides, these procedures are prone to error, since the branch points are not always easily recognised and the annotator's attentiveness decreases with time.

The KNOSSOS software considerably reduces the time required: It is about 50 times faster than other programs used up to now. In addition, the RESCOP program now makes it possible for dozens of people to work on the reconstruction at the same time. Since the method is easily learned, even non-experts can use it. Most of the students worked from home and sent their results to the scientists via e-mail. The scientists were able to establish that the error rate of the best students was no higher than that of experienced neurobiologists. Moreover, its sophisticated algorithms enable RESCOP to detect and average out inaccuracies. This means that the reconstruction is not only faster, but also more reliable than before.

"For the first time ever, these new programs could make it possible for us to unravel the complicated neural network of the brain -- a task far more complex than decoding the human genome," says Winfried Denk. Next, the scientists plan to reconstruct a fragment of the mouse cerebral cortex, as this is where all the important mental processes occur.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Journal Reference:

Moritz Helmstaedter, Kevin L Briggman, Winfried Denk. High-accuracy neurite reconstruction for high-throughput neuroanatomy. Nature Neuroscience, 2011; 14 (8): 1081 DOI: 10.1038/nn.2868

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here