What Makes A Human Brain Unique? A Newly Discovered Neuron May Be A Clue

"Scientists have taken another step toward understanding what makes the human brain unique."

"An international team has identified a kind of brain cell that exists in people but not mice, the team reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience."

"'This particular type of cell had properties that had never actually been described in another species,' says Ed Lein, one of the study's authors and an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle."

"The finding could help explain why many experimental treatments for brain disorders have worked in mice, but failed in people. It could also provide new clues to scientists who study human brain disorders ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to schizophrenia."

"'It may be that in order to fully understand psychiatric disorders, we need to get access to these special types of neurons that exist only in humans,' says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the research."

"Researchers have suggested several other brain cells that might be unique to humans. But these cells have either been found in other species, or the evidence for them has been less convincing."