The New Comparative Biology of Human Nature

Organized by Jon H. Kaas, Todd M. Preuss,
John M. Allman, and Susan M. Fitzpatrick
Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center
Irvine, CA
November 16-18, 2006

This meeting was held November 16-18 2006 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, California. 

Program - View Presentations

Meeting Overview
For much of the 20th Century, research in experimental biology, and especially in psychology and neuroscience, concentrated on a relatively few model organism species, which tends to emphasize the similarities between species and minimize the importance of difference. One result is that we have relatively little detailed information about how the human species differs from (or, for that matter, resembles) other species.

Recently, as the number of model species used in molecular biology and genetics has proliferated, interest in comparative approaches to fundamental biological issues has grown. At the same time, researchers have begun to address the biological status of humans using novel genomic, neuroscientific, and behavioral methods.  With respect to the human species, the most informative studies involve comparing humans to other primates, and especially to our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and other great apes.  In addition to identifying similarities between humans and other animals, the investigations have begun to identify human-specific features of the brain and cognition, including a unique pattern of disease vulnerability.

This colloquium examined the tension between model-organism and comparative approaches in the history of biology, and considered recent findings related to the biological and psychological specializations of humans.