Evolution of the Cerebral Cortex: From New Types of Neurons to New Cognitive Functions

Brains evolved to acquire all sorts of shapes, sizes and functions. Ultimately, their diversity is determined by the diversity of their building blocks: different types of neurons with specialized gene expression, morphology, connections and functions. With modern molecular tools, the evolution of neuron types can now be studied with unprecedented resolution.

In this Presidential Lecture, Maria Antonietta Tosches will describe her team’s research on the evolution of neuron types in the cerebral cortex. She will explain how variations in developmental processes and gene expression led to the evolution of cerebral cortices with different architectures and functions.

Tosches was born in Italy, where she studied biology. She earned her Ph.D. from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, working with Detlev Arendt on the early evolution of nervous systems. She was then a postdoc with Gilles Laurent at the Max Planck Institute in Germany before starting her lab at Columbia University in 2019. The Tosches lab studies brain evolution by comparing salamanders and other vertebrate species. She is an Allen Institute Next Generation Leader and a recipient of the McKnight Scholar Award, the Rita Allen Scholar Award and the CZI Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award.