![]() The need for surgery to correct craniosynostosis depends on the severity and extent of associated deformities. ![]() To prevent this disorder, advise parents to provide their child with at least 5 minutes of "tummy time" daily. Deformational plagiocephaly is usually treated with repositioning therapy or, in more severe or recalcitrant cases, helmet therapy. Skull radiographs can rule out craniosynostosis in infants with pronounced shape abnormalities. Those that persist beyond this time or become apparent later require a thorough workup that includes a medical and family history, various skull measurements, checking for torticollis, and careful palpation of the head and neck. Head shape abnormalities caused by molding usually disappear within the first few weeks of life. Craniosynostosis is by far the rarest of these 3 etiologies. “The research shows how the evolutionary change to a globular brain shape in modern humans (and reflected in a more globular braincase in fossil humans) was a complex multi-stage process rather than a simple switch,” he added.ABSTRACT: Head shape abnormalities in infants may be the result of pressure on the malleable bones in the newborn skull during a vaginal delivery (molding), of constant gravitational forces on the occiput when an infant is kept in the same supine position for prolonged periods (positional deformational plagiocephaly), or of premature fusing of one or more of the cranial sutures (craniosynostosis). “This is certainly an important study, showing how fragments of Neanderthal DNA have a direct effect on the brain form (and presumably brain function) of people today,” said professor Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropology specialist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study. Gunz told CNN that there are potential links between evolutionary changes in skull shape and brain regions involved in the preparation, learning and coordination of movements, as well as cognitive functions such as memory, attention, planning and potentially speech and language evolution. Neanderthals' lives weren't more violent than humans', study suggests Neanderthals are commonly thought to have relied on dangerous close range hunting techniques, using non-projectile weapons like the thrusting spears depicted here. ![]() “We would like to understand more about globularity because it might relate to specific changes in the ways our brains are organized – the relative sizes of different parts of the brain and how they are connected to each other, as compared to our ancestors.” The gene variants found on chromosomes one and 18 are linked to the expression of two nearby genes called UBR4 and PHLPP1 that affect the formation of new nerve cells and their insulation. “It gives us our first glimpse of how genes might contribute to this particularly striking aspect of the anatomy of our species,” said Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, which co-led the research. They found two genes variants that have a subtle effect on skull shape, on chromosomes one and 18, which when disrupted have major consequences for brain development, according to the research. They also studied fossil skulls and ancient genomes to compute the shapes of both Neanderthal and modern human skulls for comparison and then looked at whether any particular genes were linked to less globular brain shape in the people that carried them. One of the features that distinguishes modern humans (right) from Neanderthals (left) is a globular shape of the braincase. Philipp Gunz The team used MRI scans to analyze the cranial shape of about 4,500 peoples’ brains before looking at their genomes to work out which fragments of Neanderthal DNA they carried. “By combining data from fossils, genetics and brain imaging we can learn something about evolutionary changes to brain development in our own species,” said Gunz. These are typically humans with European ancestry stemming from interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern Europeans. “Billions of people living today carry a small fraction of Neanderthal genes in their genome – a distant echo of admixture when our ancestors left Africa and encountered Neanderthals,” said study author Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, via email. Humans have unusually globular (or round) skulls and brains compared to our ancient ancestors – including our closest extinct cousins the Neanderthals – and a new study provides a possible explanation as to why.įor the first time, an interdisciplinary team of scientists have identified two genes that affect the shape of the modern human’s skull – and they originate from Neanderthals.
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