[buntress]

Once an aspect of human exceptionalism is noted, I would imagine one would look at chimpanzees as the next analogue, and not mice.

Nearest neighbor, top down, based on genetic similarity. If you’ve got something, and it seems that it’s only detected in humans, aren’t chimpanzees (or may other great apes) the gold standard for human comparative biology?

Then follow the chain, back through old world monkeys, before reaching rodentia.

[adrianN]

It's a lot cheaper and ethically less problematic to use lab rats instead of apes, so that's what we usually do.

[buntress]

Well, yeah, but ape brains from deceased apes in captivity are probably short-listed for science experiments and not cremation or natural burial.

So it’s probably less difficult than finding a match for an organ donor, no?

I think they have some currency to start a search for samples, with this first stage finding. But really, as we’re finding out, replication will be important too.

[SubiculumCode]

Let's say you have rats and human brain samples and are ready to present a finding. Do you hold off until you find an ape brain, find expertise in dealing with ape brains (if reqiured), deal with IRB issues related to using those materials, run the tests, then publish? Obviously not. You use this preliminary work to run a more definitive series of experiments. This is how science works..as a series of studies, not a single definitive study.

[SubiculumCode]

If money and logistics were not an issue, you might be right about it being the most logical step, but primate research is not something that is largely accessible to most researchers. In any case, a null in rodents tends to put a limit on how out from humans such a neuron goes, and they are cheap to work with.

[nonbel]

I had some old pictures of stained rodent brains and saw something looked qualitatively like what they described in the first (and only) image I checked. Since they dont give any definite criteria for me to compare against, what can I do?

[hyperion2010]

Well, they give about the most definite criteria they can given current techniques, which is the transcriptomic profile. In fig 2e [0] they also give a bouton density profile. If you still have the pictures and have neurogliaform and basket cells stained with the same technique, you should be able to determine whether you are in the ballpark.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0205-2/figures/2

[nonbel]

I looked at the paper. I mean there needs to be a table that tells us what they consider the acceptable range for spine density, bouton density, soma size, soma ellipsity or whatever shape stats, branching stats, etc.

I dont really know what to do with that figure 2e... it looks like they cherry picked stats where they saw a "significant difference" from the other types of cells they looked at.

[buntress]

I'd imagine there are slides, and slides, and slides of ape neurons in circulation, possibly imaged as photomicrographs and stored in digital libraries, and heaping data sets of genomic primate data.

Are data rights costly? I doubt that sort of information has a shelf life. Consider that HELA cells are still around.

If they release the specific results, and how they arrived at such conclusions, others should be able to take that in hand, and move quickly to look at primate corollaries.