How the unique capacities of human cognition arose in evolution is a question of enduring interest. It is still unclear which developmental programs are responsible for the emergence of the human brain. The inability to determine corresponding ages between humans and apes has hampered progress in detecting developmental programs leading to the emergence of the human brain. I harness temporal variation in anatomical, behavioral, and transcriptional variation to determine corresponding ages from fetal to postnatal development and aging, between humans and chimpanzees. This multi-dimensional approach results in 137 corresponding time points across the lifespan, from embryonic day 44 to ~55 years of age, in humans and their equivalent ages in chimpanzees. I used these data to test whether developmental programs, such as the timeline of prefrontal cortex maturation, previously claimed to differ between humans and chimpanzees, do so once variation in developmental schedules is controlled for. I compared the maturation of frontal cortex projections from structural magnetic resonance (MR) scans and from temporal variation in the expression of genes used to track long-range projecting neurons (i.e., supragranular-enirhced genes) in chimpanzees and humans. Contrary to what has been suggested, the timetable of prefrontal cortex maturation is not unusually extended in humans. This dataset, which is the largest with which to determine corresponding ages across humans and chimpanzees, provides a rigorous approach to control for variation in developmental schedules and to identify developmental programs responsible for unique features of the human brain.

中文翻译：

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跨越结构和转录组尺度可以跨越整个寿命，并解决人类进化过程中额叶皮层的发育

人类认知的独特能力如何在进化中出现是一个持久的问题。尚不清楚哪些发育程序负责人脑的出现。无法确定人类和猿类之间的相应年龄已阻碍了检测导致人类大脑出现的发育程序的进展。我利用解剖，行为和转录变异的时间变化来确定人与黑猩猩之间从胎儿到产后发育和衰老的相应年龄。这种多维方法在人类及其黑猩猩的同等年龄中，从胚胎的第44天到约55岁，在整个生命周期中产生137个相应的时间点。我用这些数据来测试开发程序是否 例如，先前声称人类与黑猩猩之间存在差异的前额叶皮层成熟的时间表，一旦控制了发育时间表的变化，就可以这样做。我比较了来自结构磁共振（MR）扫描和用于追踪黑猩猩和人类中远距离投射神经元的基因（即，肾小球上皮增强基因）的基因表达随时间变化的额叶皮质投射的成熟度。与所建议的相反，前额叶皮质成熟的时间表并未在人类中异常延长。该数据集是最大的数据集，可用于确定人类和黑猩猩的相应年龄，它提供了一种严格的方法来控制发育进度的变化，并确定负责人脑独特特征的发育程序。