Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN; Saitama Prefecture) has announced the launch of an ambitious project to elucidate what makes us human. Based on the theory that intellectual ability—most notably language and logical thinking—distinguishes humans from nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees, the project will compare chimp and human genomes, focusing on genes expressed in the language center of the brain. RIKEN's Genomic Sciences Center (GSC) and its Brain Science Institute will carry out the project, which will start officially in April 2001. Yoshiyuki Sakaki, who leads Japan's human genome sequencing effort, will be director of the project, which will also compare cognitive genetic data from GSC's mouse genome database. It is expected that data from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute (Inuyama City), which has long researched primate behavior, will also be used by RIKEN to study the genetic basis of behavioral patterns.