Friday, February 15, 2013
Room 208 (Hynes Convention Center)
In the wild, chimpanzees use stones, leaves, and modified sticks as tools. In the laboratory, they outperform humans in tests of working memory. Chimpanzees lack human’s capacity for abstract representation but have species-specific cognitive capabilities. In MRI studies, prefrontal white matter develops throughout prepuberty in chimpanzees and humans, unlike macaques, enhancing the effect of postnatal experience on neuronal connectivity. In infancy, white matter development is faster in humans.