Scientists model 17,000 year old brain from child’s skull

Thanks to the discovery of the 17,000-year-old skull of a Paleolithic preteen in southern Italy, a team of scientists led by University of Florence ancient history professor Fabio Martini has been able to recreate the brain of an early human ancestor for the first time.

According to The Local, Martini and his colleagues discovered the ancient skull, which belonged to a boy between the ages of 10 and 12, in Calabria’s Grotta del Romito, a cave used by early Homo sapiens between 23,000 and 10,000 years ago. The researchers found an imprint on the inside of the skull that they used to create a model of the ancient brain.

“The boy was still growing and therefore the bones of his skull were quite soft,” Martini said to the Italian publication. “The pressure of the growing brain on the bone left a sort of ‘imprint’ on the inside of the skull. Now, thanks to 3D scanners and computer technology, we have been able to create a reliable 3D model of an ancient brain, which is groundbreaking. Soon we will be able to hold in our hands the brain of a 17,000-year-old boy.”

Working with a team of neuroscientists, anthropologists and paleontologists, he explained that he plans to compare the reconstructed brain with that of a modern youth, especially in the regions of the brain associated with language, social interaction and spatial coordination, Archaeology said. Their findings could provide new insight into how these areas originally developed.

Work would be the first ever recreation of Paleolithic brain

An archaeologist by trade, Martini revealed the discovery of the skull and the recreation of the ancient brain during a press conference at a recent UNESCO Global Geoparks event, according to International Business Times. He said that their reconstruction, which would be the first ever morphological reconstruction of a Paleolithic brain, should be finished by year’s end.

The skull itself was discovered during a recent excavation at the Grotta del Romito, which has been called one of Italy’s most important Paleolithic sites. Expeditions at this cave have already unearthed several dwellings, rock art and burial sites created during a period that was marked by significant climate change, and such findings have proven essential to experts’ understanding of pre-agricultural revolution Italy, The Local and International Business Times said.

While this will mark the first time that an ancient human brain has been recreated, it is not the first time that researchers have looked to reproduce the central nervous system’s key organ. In late 2015, scientists digitally recreated a portion of a juvenile rat’s brain, including 31,000 cells of 207 different types and 37 different neural connections, according to Live Science.

That research was part of the Blue Brain Project, an imitative to create a computer simulation of a rat brain, and eventually of the human mind, inside the computer. The team responsible for that work successfully harnessed the fundamental behavior of neurons and even predicted some kinds of brain-related behavior that had not been previously discovered, the website added.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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