About

Welcome to the the Macroevolutionary Neuroanatomy Lab at Stony Brook University! Our lab is dedicated to the macroevolutionary study of the brain. We investigate comparative differences in neural structure, and draw information from recent advances in molecular phylogenetic inference to estimate how traits have changed across millions of years of evolution. The primary objective is to elucidate the evolutionary pathways that underlie present-day variation, and investigate how neuroanatomical changes in deep time relate to diversity, adaptation and function.

Research topics

• Biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Computer Science
• Neuroscience
• Ecology
• Computational biology
• Medicine
• Zoology
• Physiology
• Anatomy

Selected publications

• Brain–Behavior Differences in Premodern and Modern Lineages of Domestic Dogs

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2025-05-22 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Although domestic dogs were the first domesticated species, the nature of dog domestication remains a topic of ongoing debate. In particular, brain and behavior changes associated with different stages of the domestication process have been difficult to disambiguate. Most modern Western breed dogs possess highly derived physical and behavioral traits because of intense artificial selection for appearance and function within the past 200 years. In contrast, premodern dogs, including primitive/ancient breeds, village dogs, and New Guinea Singing Dogs, have undergone less intensive artificial selection and retain more ancestral characteristics. Consequently, comparisons between modern and premodern dogs can shed light on brain and behavior changes that have occurred recently in the domestication process. Here, we addressed this question using a voxel-based morphometry analysis of structural MRI images from 72 modern breed dogs and 13 premodern dogs (32 females). Modern breed dogs show widespread expansions of neocortex and reductions in the amygdala and other subcortical regions. Furthermore, cortical measurements significantly predicted individual variation in trainability, while amygdala measurements significantly predicted fear scores. These results contrast with the long-standing view that domestication consistently involves reduction in brain size and cognitive capacity. Rather, our results suggest that recent artificial selection has targeted higher-order brain regions in modern breed dogs, perhaps to facilitate behavioral flexibility and close interaction and cooperation with humans.

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• The macroevolution of brain size and cortical association areas in primates

  Evolution of Nervous Systems · 2025-05-13

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Neurothermodynamics as a contributing factor shaping the mammalian brain

  Evolution of Nervous Systems · 2025-05-04

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Evolution of the cerebellum in hominoids: From macro to micro

  Evolution of Nervous Systems · 2025-12-20

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Phylogenetic reduction of the magnocellular red nucleus in primates and inter-subject variability in humans

  Frontiers in Neuroanatomy · 2024-03-13 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Introduction: The red nucleus is part of the motor system controlling limb movements. While this seems to be a function common in many vertebrates, its organization and circuitry have undergone massive changes during evolution. In primates, it is sub-divided into the magnocellular and parvocellular parts that give rise to rubrospinal and rubro-olivary connection, respectively. These two subdivisions are subject to striking variation within the primates and the size of the magnocellular part is markedly reduced in bipedal primates including humans. The parvocellular part is part of the olivo-cerebellar circuitry that is prominent in humans. Despite the well-described differences between species in the literature, systematic comparative studies of the red nucleus remain rare. Methods: We therefore mapped the red nucleus in cytoarchitectonic sections of 20 primate species belonging to 5 primate groups including prosimians, new world monkeys, old world monkeys, non-human apes and humans. We used Ornstein-Uhlenbeck modelling, ancestral state estimation and phylogenetic analysis of covariance to scrutinize the phylogenetic relations of the red nucleus volume. Results: We created openly available high-resolution cytoarchitectonic delineations of the human red nucleus in the microscopic BigBrain model and human probabilistic maps that capture inter-subject variations in quantitative terms. Further, we compared the volume of the nucleus across primates and showed that the parvocellular subdivision scaled proportionally to the brain volume across the groups while the magnocellular part deviated significantly from the scaling in humans and non-human apes. These two groups showed the lowest size of the magnocellular red nucleus relative to the whole brain volume and the largest relative difference between the parvocellular and magnocellular subdivision. Discussion: That is, the red nucleus has transformed from a magnocellular-dominated to a parvocellular-dominated station. It is reasonable to assume that these changes are intertwined with evolutionary developments in other brain regions, in particular the motor system. We speculate that the interspecies variations might partly reflect the differences in hand dexterity but also the tentative involvement of the red nucleus in sensory and cognitive functions.

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• Evolutionary Perspectives: Homologies and Analogies

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2024-09-03 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen access

  Determining homologies and analogies of brain structure and function across species is of major interest in systems neuroscience, comparative biology, and brain mapping.Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a continued target of such analyses because it has expanded considerably throughout evolution.It is heavily diff erentiated and expanded in primates compared to mouse, rat, tree shrew, and marmoset brains, and it performs computational functions that are more complex than other association cortex.This chapter reviews the major regions and circuits observed across species within PFC.It looks at the evolution of PFC and how this could produce higher-order cognition, including social behavior, as well as language elements in humans.It provides a synopsis of some main organizational principles of PFC as well as potential mechanisms by which major circuits in PFC exert control.It then reviews how unique contributions of optogenetics, chemogenetics, large-scale electrophysiology, and calcium imaging contribute to understanding PFC function.It also addresses the utility of animal models for understanding the structure and function of PFC.The discussions that contributed to this chapter provide a modern foundation for the ongoing goal of generating a consensus statement regarding the ambition of determining the homologies and analogies of PFC, as well as the cognitive, developmental, and translational insights gleaned from the promise of such an eventual consensus statement.

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• The evolution of human altriciality and brain development in comparative context

  Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2023-12-04 · 49 citations

  articleOpen access

  Human newborns are considered altricial compared with other primates because they are relatively underdeveloped at birth. However, in a broader comparative context, other mammals are more altricial than humans. It has been proposed that altricial development evolved secondarily in humans due to obstetrical or metabolic constraints, and in association with increased brain plasticity. To explore this association, we used comparative data from 140 placental mammals to measure how altriciality evolved in humans and other species. We also estimated how changes in brain size and gestation length influenced the timing of neurodevelopment during hominin evolution. Based on our data, humans show the highest evolutionary rate to become more altricial (measured as the proportion of adult brain size at birth) across all placental mammals, but this results primarily from the pronounced postnatal enlargement of brain size rather than neonatal changes. In addition, we show that only a small number of neurodevelopmental events were shifted to the postnatal period during hominin evolution, and that they were primarily related to the myelination of certain brain pathways. These results indicate that the perception of human altriciality is mostly driven by postnatal changes, and they point to a possible association between the timing of myelination and human neuroplasticity.

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• Evolutionary scaling and cognitive correlates of primate frontal cortex microstructure

  Brain Structure and Function · 2023-10-27 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
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• Not like night and day: the nocturnal letter-winged kite does not differ from diurnal congeners in orbit or endocast morphology

  Royal Society Open Science · 2022-05-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Nocturnal birds display diverse adaptations of the visual system to low-light conditions. The skulls of birds reflect many of these and are used increasingly to infer nocturnality in extinct species. However, it is unclear how reliable such assessments are, particularly in cases of recent evolutionary transitions to nocturnality. Here, we investigate a case of recently evolved nocturnality in the world's only nocturnal hawk, the letter-winged kite Elanus scriptus . We employed phylogenetically informed analyses of orbit, optic foramen and endocast measurements from three-dimensional reconstructions of micro-computed tomography scanned skulls of the letter-winged kite, two congeners, and 13 other accipitrid and falconid raptors. Contrary to earlier suggestions, the letter-winged kite was not unique in any of our metrics. However, all species of Elanus have significantly higher ratios of orbit versus optic foramen diameter, suggesting high visual sensitivity at the expense of acuity. In addition, visual system morphology varies greatly across accipitrid species, likely reflecting hunting styles. Overall, our results suggest that the transition to nocturnality can occur rapidly and without changes to key hard-tissue indicators of vision, but also that hard-tissue anatomy of the visual system may provide a means of inferring a range of raptor behaviours, well beyond nocturnality.

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• Segmentation and morphometric MRI atlas of the chimpanzee cerebellum

  Research Square · 2022-12-06 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Increased appreciation of the functional heterogeneity of the cerebellum and its contribution to various neuropsychiatric impairments has sparked a resurgence of interest in its comparative anatomy and evolution. Recent evidence suggests that (1) the cerebellar lobules play a prominent role in cognitive, social, and behavioral computations (Desmond et al. 1997; Schmahmann and Sherman 1998; Stoodley and Schmahmann 2009a), and that (2) select portions of the cerebellum may have undergone evolutionary expansion in some lineages of mammals, including humans (Balsters et al. 2010; Smaers et al. 2018), thus creating a need for a higher neuroanatomical resolution of the cerebellum across a broad comparative sample. Here, we provide a detailed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) atlas of the chimpanzee cerebellum as well as a methodology for the systematic delineation of the vermal and hemispheric lobules. Group averaging across 67 individuals facilitated the characterization of 32 cerebellar masks across the anterior, posterior, and flocculonodular lobes of the cerebellum. A segmentation protocol, including detailed anatomical definitions of each structure, provides the foundation for the construction of future multimodal cerebellar atlases that can deliver insight into cerebellar evolution and pathology.

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Frequent coauthors

• Carrie S. Mongle

  Stony Brook University

  17 shared

• Daniel T. Ksepka

  16 shared

• Jacob C. Dunn

  University of Cambridge

  15 shared

• Chet C. Sherwood

  George Washington University

  14 shared

• Karl Zilles

  10 shared

• Christopher C. Gilbert

  10 shared

• Amy M. Balanoff

  9 shared

• Patrick R. Hof

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  9 shared

Labs

• Smaers LabPI

Education

• PhD, Biological Anthropology

  University of Cambridge

  2010

• MPhil, Biological Anthropology

  University of Cambridge

  2006

• Master, Archaeology

  University of Leuven

  2005

• Master, Anthropology

  University of Leuven

  2004

• Master, Psychology

  University of Leuven

  2002

• Bachelor, Psychology

  University of Leuven

  1999