The mammalian brain varies in size by a factor of 100,000 and is composed of anatomically and functionally distinct structures. Theoretically, the manner in which brain composition can evolve is limited, ranging from highly modular (“mosaic evolution...
Ketone bodies (KBs) are the only energy substrates oxidized by the brain, whose concentration in the circulation can greatly increase when a physiological situation requires it. For example, when an adult human fasts for two days, circulating KBs ris...
Brain functional connectivity evolves dynamically during brain development, aging, illness, and cognitive activities. Traditional methods rely on static network snapshots, which do not capture the dynamics of the brain. We propose two new indices: Dy...
The eye is the primary sensory organ that obtains information from the ecological environments and specifically bridges the brain with the extra environment. However, the coevolutionary relationships between eye size and ecological factors, behaviour...
When computers started to become a dominant part of technology around the 1950s, fundamental questions about reliable designs and robustness were of great relevance. Their development gave rise to the exploration of new questions, such as what made b...
Brain metastases are highly-evolved manifestations of breast cancer arising in a unique microenvironment, giving them exceptional adaptability in the face of new extrinsic pressures. The incidence is rising in line with population ageing, and use of...
Although an increasing number of studies are combining skeletal and neural morphology data in a phylogenetic context, most studies do not include extinct taxa due to the rarity of preserved endocasts. The early Eocene avifauna of the Fur Formation of...
Retrotransposons, a large and diverse class of transposable elements that are still active in humans, represent a remarkable force of genomic innovation underlying mammalian evolution. Among the features distinguishing mammals from all other vertebra...
Humans, and most other late Homo species, are characterized by large brains and bodies. However, the discovery of two small-brained Homo species—H. floresiensis and Homo naledi—has cast doubts on large brain size as a defining feature of...
Mammalian genomes encode tens of thousands of long-noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which are capable of interactions with DNA, RNA and protein molecules, thereby enabling a variety of transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulatory activities. Striking...
A systematic review of the published literature was conducted to analyze the management evolution of brain metastases from different cancers. Using the keywords “brain metastasis”, “brain metastases”, “CNS metastasis&rdq...
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), the dominant polyunsaturated fatty acid in photoreceptors, neurons, and synapses, is usually described as a passive structural membrane constituent. We propose a different view: DHA is a quantum-electronically active molec...
Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) hold tremendous potential for neurological therapeutics and neuroprosthetics; however, their long-term clinical viability is fundamentally limited by chronic interfacial failure. This failure originates from the...
Neurotrophins (NTFs) are structurally related neurotrophic factors essential for differentiation, survival, neurite outgrowth, and the plasticity of neurons. Abnormalities associated with neurotrophin-signaling (NTF-signaling) were associated with ne...
Alcohol consumption affects the function of the brain and long-term excessive alcohol intake can lead to severe brain disorders. Wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) recording devices combined with Brain Computer Interface (BCI) software may serve as...
The development of the human brain starts with the orchestrated expression of our genes during embryogenesis. Non-protein-coding DNA sequences (gene promoters and enhancers) dynamically interact to form a three-dimensional (3D) network, orchestrating...
Asymmetry of brain function is known to be widespread amongst vertebrates, and it seems to have appeared very early in their evolution. In fact, recent evidence of functional asymmetry in invertebrates suggests that even small brains benefit from the...
Brain size fascinates society as well as researchers since it is a measure often associated with intelligence and was used to define species with high “intellectual capabilities”. In general, brain size is correlated with body size. However, there ar...
The main water channel of the brain, aquaporin-4 (AQP4), is one of the classical water-specific aquaporins. It is expressed in many epithelial tissues in the basolateral membrane domain. It is present in the membranes of supporting cells in most sens...
Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) challenges have significantly advanced research in brain tumor segmentation and related medical imaging tasks. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the BraTS datasets from 2012 to 2024, examining their evolut...
Tactile-foraging birds have evolved an enlarged principal sensory nucleus (PrV) but smaller brain regions related to the visual system, which reflects the difference in sensory dependence. The “trade-off” may exist between different sense...
Background: Radiomic analysis enables quantitative characterization of post-radiotherapy brain lesions beyond conventional imaging. However, the longitudinal behavior of radiomic features, particularly across different MRI scanners, remains insuffici...
The AUTS2 gene plays major roles during brain development and is associated with various neuropathologies including autism. Data in non-mammalian species are scarce, and the aim of our study was to provide a comprehensive analysis of auts2 evolution...
Mental issues are by many considered the main challenge for health authorities in industrialized nations. In this entry, I discuss an approach that may prove useful for ameliorating the situation and thereby improving quality of life. The analysis us...
This concept paper gives a narrative about intelligence from insects to the human brain, showing where evolution may have been influenced by the structures in these simpler organisms. The ideas also come from the author’s own cognitive model, w...
It is commonly believed that consciousness is a higher brain function. Here we consider the likelihood, based on abundant neuroevolutionary data that lower brain affective phenomenal experiences provide the “energy” for the developmental construction...
Human evolution is characterized by rapid brain enlargement and the emergence of unique cognitive abilities. Besides its distinctive cytoarchitectural organization and extensive inter-neuronal connectivity, the human brain is also defined by high rat...
Background and Objectives: Brain metastases frequently evolve over time in multiple waves, especially in patients with prolonged survival. Despite repeated imaging and targeted therapies, lesion-level continuity is fragmented in clinical practice, as...
Functional amyloids are fibrillary proteins with a cross-β structure that play a structural or regulatory role in pro- and eukaryotes. Previously, we have demonstrated that the RNA-binding FXR1 protein functions in an amyloid form in the rat bra...
The shape of the brain influences skull morphology in birds, and both traits are driven by phylogenetic and functional constraints. Studies on avian cranial and neuroanatomical evolution are strengthened by data on extinct birds, but complete, 3D-pre...
Music is a universal feature of human societies, which suggests that an evolutionary perspective should help us understand our appreciation. The reward (pleasure) system of the brain offers a suitable framework. The question is why we evolved rewards...
Evolutionary theory should be a fundamental guide for neuroscientists. This would seem a trivial statement, but I believe that taking it seriously is more complicated than it appears to be, as I argue in this article. Elsewhere, I proposed the notion...
The need to protect neural tissue from toxins or other substances is as old as neural tissue itself. Early recognition of this need has led to more than a century of investigation of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Many aspects of this important neuro...
The brain is lateralized morphologically and functionally, with unique species-related specifications [...]
Eutherians have 11 retrotransposon Gag-like (RTL)/sushi-ichi retrotransposon homolog (SIRH) genes presumably derived from a certain retrovirus. Accumulating evidence indicates that the RTL/SIRH genes play a variety of roles in the current mammalian d...
Olduvai protein domains (also known as DUF1220 or NBPF) have undergone the greatest human-specific increase in the copy number of any coding region in the genome. Their repeat number was strongly associated with the evolutionary expansion of brain vo...
In this study, we analyzed the organization of urocortin 3 (Ucn3)-expressing neuronal populations in the brain of the adult sea lamprey by means of in situ hybridization. We also studied the brain of larval sea lampreys to establish whether this pros...
Mammalian placentation represents one of the most striking evolutionary innovations among vertebrates, and accumulating evidence indicates that virus-derived genes—particularly the metavirus-derived PEG10 and PEG11/RTL1—have played indisp...
Improving absolute accuracy in industrial manipulators remains difficult because rigid-body kinematic calibration cannot fully represent configuration-dependent non-geometric effects. Drawing inspiration from biological brain–body co-adaptation...
Evolutionary theory is applied to recent neuroscientific findings on factors associated with risk-and-reward systems, and consequently, aspects of human decision making in spaceflight. Factors include enzymes aiding metabolic pathways of dopamine and...
We hypothesize that megafauna extinctions throughout the Pleistocene, that led to a progressive decline in large prey availability, were a primary selecting agent in key evolutionary and cultural changes in human prehistory. The Pleistocene human pas...
Accurate segmentation of brain tumors in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) remains a challenging task due to heterogeneous tumor structures, varying intensities across modalities, and limited annotated data. Deep learning has significantly advanced se...
Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is a non-pathogenic virus that mainly infects primates with the help of adenoviruses. AAV is being widely used as a delivery vector for in vivo gene therapy, as evidenced by five currently approved drugs and more than 255...
Modern humans have evolved with a staple source of preformed docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in the diet. An important turning point in human evolution was the discovery of high-quality, easily digested nutrients from coastal seafood and inland freshwater...
External ventricular drains (EVDs) are commonly used in neurosurgery in different conditions but frequently in the management of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to monitor and/or control intracranial pressure (ICP) by diverting cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)...
Introduction and objectives. This study aims to investigate whether the cerebral modifications of posttraumatic reactive astrocitose can be considered an objective criterion for determining the age of traumatic cranio-cerebral lesions. Materials and ...
Motor Imagery (MI)-based Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) often rely heavily on subject-specific feature selection to achieve high classification accuracy. However, this introduces substantial computational overhead and calibration friction tha...
Brain tumors are highly heterogeneous and have been classified by the World Health Organization in various histological and molecular subtypes. Gliomas have been classified as ranging from low-grade astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas to high-grade a...
The origin of difficult birth is still a matter of debate in obstetrics. Recent studies hypothesized that early hominins already experienced obstructed labor even with reduced neonatal head sizes. The aim of this work is to test this hypothesis using...
The management of traumatic brain injury remains one of the greatest challenges in modern medicine. Determining whom to treat, when to intervene, and how aggressively to proceed and persist continues to define the central dilemma of neurotrauma care....
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