Subscribe now   Home |Life | News  Human brains enjoy ongoing
evolution  The human brain may still be evolving, new research
suggests. New variants of two genes that control brain
development have swept through much of the human population
during the last several thousand years, biologists have found.
The evolution of a large, complex brain has been the defining
feature of the human lineage - although human brain size has not
changed over the past 200,000 years. But it is not apparent
whether the new genetic adaptations discovered in human brains
have any effect on brain size, or intelligence.  What is more,
not everyone possesses the new gene variants, potentially
inflaming an already controversial debate about whether brains
of different groups of people function differently.   Brain size
There are two new genetic studies that suggest the brain may
still be evolving. Geneticist Bruce Lahn of the University of
Chicago in Illinois, US, and colleagues analysed the sequences
of two genes active in the brain -