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Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, 883-890 (November 2006) | doi:10.1038/nrn2008

OpinionPatterns of neural stem and progenitor cell division may underlie evolutionary cortical expansion

Arnold Kriegstein1, Stephen Noctor1 & Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño1  About the authors

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The dramatic evolutionary expansion of the cerebral cortex of Homo sapiens underlies our unique higher cortical functions, and therefore bears on the ultimate issue of what makes us human. Recent insights into developmental events during early proliferative stages of cortical development indicate how neural stem and progenitor cells might interact to produce cortical expansion during development, and could shed light on evolutionary changes in cortical structure.

Author affiliations

  1. Arnold Kriegstein, Stephen Noctor and Verónica Martínez-Cerdeño are at the Institute for Stem Cell and Tissue Biology, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Ave, HSW, 1201, San Francisco, California, USA.

Correspondence to: Arnold Kriegstein1 Email: kriegsteina@stemcell.ucsf.edu

Published online 11 October 2006

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