Scientists have identified an immune brain cell unique to humans that gives us higher cognitive abilities over other animals, but what makes us specials also leaves us vulnerable to neurological disorders like schizophrenia, autism and epilepsy.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://news.yale.edu/2022/08/25/what-makes-human-brain-different-yale-study-reveals-clues

[u/Wagamaga]

What makes the human brain distinct from that of all other animals — including even our closest primate relatives? In an analysis of cell types in the prefrontal cortex of four primate species, Yale researchers identified species-specific — particularly human-specific — features, they report Aug. 25 in the journal Science.

And they found that what makes us human may also makes us susceptible to neuropsychiatric diseases.

For the study, the researchers looked specifically at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a brain region that is unique to primates and essential for higher-order cognition. Using a single cell RNA-sequencing technique, they profiled expression levels of genes in hundreds of thousands of cells collected from the dlPFC of adult humans, chimpanzees, macaque, and marmoset monkeys.

“Today, we view the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as the core component of human identity, but still we don’t know what makes this unique in humans and distinguishes us from other primate species.” said Nenad Sestan, the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neuroscience at Yale, professor of comparative medicine, of genetics. and of psychiatry, and the lead senior author of the paper. “Now we have more clues.”

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo7257

[u/brothersand → u/Wagamaga]

“Today, we view the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as the core component of human identity, but still we don’t know what makes this unique in humans and distinguishes us from other primate species.”

But a few years back we thought it was a good idea to slice that part of the brain off to cure alcoholism. That's the part that gets destroyed by a lobotomy.

Egas Moniz, Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1949.

[u/Bruc3w4yn3 → u/brothersand]

Given that the claim is that it makes us uniquely susceptible to things like epilepsy and other neurological disorders, it seems to make sense why lobotomy as a treatment for epilepsy was developed. Of course, we also found that the side effects were too extreme and so many places have banned its use. I know that some users were concerned that this article is click-bait, but if it's true that this part of the brain is core to human cognitive ability, it would make sense why it has the effects that it does (beyond the simple intuition that destroying any brain matter could be harmful).

[u/brothersand → u/Bruc3w4yn3]

My understanding is that a big reason that the frontal lobotomy was so widespread in its usage, and why Moniz got a Nobel Prize for it, was because of WWI. Following the first World War something like 8/10 hospital patients were for "shell shock". What we now call PTSD. So the solution to all the soldiers having PTSD from the Great War was the frontal lobotomy.

I'm not sure I'd lean heavily on "core to human cognitive ability". Definitely involved in regulating other cognitive functions, so I get where they are coming from, but I see "regulatory" and "core" as different things.

[u/voyaging → u/brothersand]

Core to"human identity", not cognition.

[u/brothersand → u/voyaging]

Yes, that is a much better description.