What is "Mind?"

The most prolific source of new genes in animals, plants, fungi and other life whose cells have nuclei involves the shuffling or duplication of bits of DNA from existing genes. It was widely thought that de novo evolution of genes was quite rare, because the proteins they code for are often large and complex—most fail to function properly if a single key component is out of place, so randomly evolving a working gene seemed implausible.

When an international team of researchers scanned the human genome for de novo genes, however, they putatively uncovered 60, three times more than once estimated. More surprising, many of these genes are active in the cerebral cortex, suggesting that de novo genes might have played a key role in the evolution of the human mind.

"The cerebral cortex in the brain plays key roles in learning, memory, language, thought, emotion, perceptual awareness and consciousness," says researcher Dong-Dong Wu, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Science's Kunming Institute of Zoology, co-author of a November 10 report in PloS Genetics. "Our results suggest that de novo–originated genes may be responsible for some of these characters."

Researchers have long known that some areas of the brain are deeply connected to other regions — but now a team from Indiana University and the Netherlands says these connected brain regions form strong connections to each other, creating a cerebral “rich club.”
This club comprises 12 hub regions, which the researchers say are involved in complex human behavior and cognitive tasks. If any of the members of this club were damaged, the effects would be wide-ranging; if brain areas outside the club were damaged, a patient would see localized effects but the overall brain’s information flow would be uninterrupted.