Behavior that we’d consider intelligent is oddly widespread in the animal kingdom. Animals with very different brains from ours—a species of octopus and various birds—engage with tools, to give just ...

Brain scientists have long debated when, and how strongly, sex starts to shape the human brain. A growing body of imaging work now points to a clear answer: measurable differences in brain size and ...

Genes play a powerful role in shaping your health—you won’t believe how your DNA influences everything from ADHD to Parkinson’s disease. Here’s what groundbreaking research reveals about the ...

New research shows how the Eurasian common shrew (Sorex araneus) changes its brain and bodily size throughout the year. The study, published online in eLife, reveals how changes in gene expression ...

The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains -- with humans bucking this trend -- a new study has revealed. The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains -- with humans ...

Researchers have identified thousands of genes linked to brain structure that shine a light on how our genetic makeup shapes the development of the brain, according to research published in Nature ...

A recent study, published in Biology Letters, challenges the long-held notion that domestication is the primary driver of reduced brain size in domesticated animals, specifically dogs. Employing a ...

Scientists have long believed that, generally speaking, the bigger an animal is, the bigger its brain. But our recent study challenges the nature of that linear view and reveals new insights about how ...

Humans owe our impressive intellect to our large brains, which are unusually sophisticated thanks to evolution. The first surge in our brain size occurred between 2 million and 800,000 years ago, when ...

Brain size and cognitive capacity have undergone remarkable evolutionary transformations across vertebrates, reflecting a balance between energetic costs, developmental constraints and selective ...

Compared to other large primates, humans have unusually big brains. Now, scientists have suggested that the large size of our brains may have been influenced by the gut microbiome. The microbes in the ...

The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains - with humans bucking this trend - a new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution has revealed. Researchers at the University of ...