Meet NOTCH2NL, the human-specific genes that may have given us our big brains

The genetic changes behind the expansion of human brains that played an important role in our ability as a species to think, problem-solve, and develop culture have been elusive. But in a pair of papers publishing May 31 in Cell, two teams of researchers identify a gene family, NOTCH2NL, that appears to play an important role in human-specific cortex development and may have been a driving force in the evolution of our large brains.