What makes the human brain special - from cellular function to clinical translation

Abstract

What makes the human brain special? Human neurons, glia cells, and cortical circuits have been shown to be significantly different from those of other species, including mammals. This has led to a massive effort by the neuroscience community to directly study these differences in a multimodal approach. The studies conducted include single-cell and network recordings of human tissue samples, single-cell transcriptomics, and morphological analysis of the distinct cells to better understand the underlying differences from the cellular to the systems level. Furthermore, to overcome the translational gap from animal studies to patient care, the development of disease modeling in human tissue samples is of utmost interest. Here we review and highlight research that focuses on the specialization of the human brain from molecular expression, cellular properties to the challenges and promises of clinical translation.

Keywords: Cell types; Cortex; Epilepsy; Glioblastoma; Human brain.