Dataset to find corresponding ages across the lifespan in humans and chimpanzees

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 (PFC) 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-enriched genes) in chimpanzees and humans. Contrary to what
has been suggested, the timetable of PFC 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.