The Idea Organ

Talks were recorded and will be posted on this page in the weeks following the event. Follow this event page, as well as CARTA’s social media accounts (see page footer), for updates.

Summary:
Humans live in a world of ideas—born in the brain, shared through language, accumulated in culture across generations, and made reality. From the first flaked stone tools to the building of shelters, from figurative and symbolic art to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination—an “idea organ” that has transformed both our species and the planet itself. 

The distinct biology of the human brain, scaffolded by language and culture, allows ideas to be formed, named, shared, and accumulated across generations. This process of cumulative culture, knowledge built upon knowledge, has propelled humans far beyond the cognitive landscapes of other large-brained animals, including our closest living and extinct relatives. 

This symposium will explore how the human brain develops, functions, and maintains its role as the seat of ideas. We will trace its story from molecules, cells, neuronal migration and circuitry, to the maternal, parental, and social influences that shape its growth, including the countless ways that brain function can be compromised at any stage of life. We will examine how the uniquely human interplay of biology and culture gave rise to a brain capable of perceiving and remaking the world around us. By examining the evolutionary roots of our “idea organ,” we aim to illuminate how this singular capacity emerged—and how it continues to drive human innovation.

Event Sessions:

Speakers	Session
Katerina Semendeferi Alysson Muotri	Welcome and Opening Remarks Welcome by CARTA Co-Director, Katerina Semendeferi. Opening remarks by Event Co-chair, Alysson Muotri.
Dean Falk	Hominin paleoneurology during the Stone Age–and before! Paleoneurologists study the size, shape, and surfaces of the brains of human ancestors by producing casts of the interiors of their fossilized skulls (endocasts) and measuring the volumes of their braincases (cranial capacities). Cranial capacities from dated skulls show that brain size more than tripled in hominins during the Stone Age that began around 3.5 million years ago (ma). Endocasts replicate brain shape and, with luck, reproduce impressions of blood vessels and convolutions that were... read more
Miles Wilkinson	The evolution of the human brain through shifts in gene regulation A fundamental question in biology is: how did humans acquire their unique characteristics? What allows us to stand upright, while our primate ancestors walked on all fours? What brain alterations drove our increased intelligence and allowed us to perceive our own mortality? One of the mechanisms that has been hypothesized to be involved is changes in gene expression elicited by nucleotide alterations in non-coding regions of the human genome. In my talk, I will focus on a class of DNA sequences... read more
Genevieve Konopka	Human-specific alterations in brain cellular proportions How do genes drive the development of cell types that build the human brain and give rise to cognition? More specifically, how does human cognitive behavior emerge from a set of evolutionarily adapted genomic programs? The human brain is comprised of heterogenous cell types and understanding the gene expression patterns and chromatin states within each of these cell types can provide important insights into both brain evolution as well as the development of cognitive disorders. We have used... read more
James Rilling	Human brain specializations related to language and theory of mind Humans excel at transmitting ideas, skills, and knowledge across generations, and at building on those competencies in a cumulative manner. The transmission of our cumulative culture is assumed to depend on both language and mental perspective-taking, or theory of mind. If humans have specialized abilities in these domains, we must have neurobiological specializations to support them. Our research has used comparative primate neuroimaging to attempt to identify such specializations. The arcuate... read more
Nenad Sestan	Development and evolutionary specializations of human cognitive networks The extraordinary abilities of the cerebral cortex are central to what sets humans apart from other species. A defining feature of the cortex is its organization along a sensorimotor-to-association (S–A) axis, extending from primary sensorimotor areas to transmodal association regions that support abstract cognition. This axis varies across species and has been profoundly remodeled in humans. In this presentation, I will discuss our recent work on the molecular and cellular mechanisms that... read more
Alex Pollen	The costs of big brains Human brain expansion is often discussed in terms of the genetic and molecular innovations that drove uniquely human cognitive abilities. Yet evolution is fundamentally a process of tradeoffs. Disproportionate expansion of forebrain structures increases the demands placed on long-range connectivity, metabolism, and cellular maintenance, imposing costs that scale with brain size. These constraints may be especially acute for small populations of midbrain dopaminergic neurons, which must sustain... read more
Bruce Miller	The human brain in its usual, extraordinary and compromised states In this lecture, Dr. Bruce Miller examines what neurodegenerative disease reveals about the neural basis of creativity and the social mind. Research in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) shows that visual creativity is not rare: a subset of patients—particularly those with left anterior temporal degeneration—develop new or intensified artistic abilities early in the disease course. These findings suggest that damage to language-dominant left hemisphere regions may release posterior visual networks... read more
Alysson Muotri	Neanderthalizing brain organoids The evolution of the human brain reflects the interplay between genetic innovation and environmental pressures. Neuro-oncological ventral antigen 1 (NOVA1) is an evolutionarily conserved splicing regulator essential for neural development and harbors a protein-coding substitution unique to modern humans compared with Neanderthals and Denisovans. To investigate the functional consequences of this human-specific change, we reintroduced the archaic NOVA1 allele into human induced pluripotent stem... read more
Joseph Paradiso	The transformational potential of computer-assisted brains My grandparents witnessed massive technology changes in energy and transportation, from steam to nuclear power, and horse and buggy to lunar rovers. My generation experienced the rise of networking and information technology. The generation to come is poised to encounter human transformation. The visions that many of us touted in the early days of ubiquitous/pervasive computing have largely come to pass in this age of IoT, and now sensors and interfaces of all kinds are embedded in smart... read more
All Speakers Genevieve Konopka Pascal Gagneux	Wrap-Up, Question & Answer Session, and Closing Remarks Question and answer session with all speakers. Wrap-Up by symposium co-chair, Genevieve Konopka. Closing remarks by CARTA Executive Co-Director, Pascal Gagneux.