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.
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.
300 is kind of a paltry number. One high school’s population, for a medium sized town.
Look at one high school, then another. Take each high school from opposite ends of the country. Same results? Not sure about that. But hey, magic number says we’re all good. Run the article, right?
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.