For most of human evolution, the story of the brain seemed to move in one direction: up. Over millions of years, our ...

Human brains have been shrinking since prehistoric times, some studies suggest. Whether this is true and why it has happened are debated.

UC San Diego researchers have found high levels of lead in the teeth of both Neanderthals (left) and modern humans (right). However, a gene mutation may have protected modern human brains, allowing ...

Historically, neuroscientists and evolutionary anthropologists assumed that modern humans' disproportionately large frontal lobes and the explosive growth of our prefrontal cortex millennia ago were ...