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 controlle...

人类认知的独特能力如何在演化过程中产生，是一个长期广受关注的科学问题。目前仍未明确究竟是哪些发育程序促成了人类大脑的形成。无法准确确定人类与猿类之间的发育对应年龄，这一局限阻碍了对驱动人类大脑演化的发育程序的研究进展。本研究利用解剖学、行为学与转录组学层面的时序变异，确定了人类与黑猩猩从胎儿期、产后发育直至衰老阶段的对应发育年龄。通过这一多维度研究方法，本研究构建了覆盖全生命周期的137个对应时间点：人类从胚胎发育第44天至约55岁阶段，以及黑猩猩对应的等价发育年龄。本研究利用这些数据，检验此前声称存在差异的人类与黑猩猩的发育程序（如前额叶皮层（prefrontal cortex, PFC）成熟时序），在控制发育节律变异后是否仍存在差异。