Ramachandran's main thesis, though he often strays from it, is that networks of brain cells known as mirror neurons, which were discovered in monkeys in the late 1990s, played a uniquely important part in human evolution.
Mirror neurons, which were discovered in monkey F5 and PF areas, are activated when a monkey performs an action and observes it [ 4, 5].
When two new species of titi monkey, a cat-size African group, were discovered by biologists in 2002, one, Callicebus stephennashi, was named for him.
Second, so-called mirror neurons were discovered in the premotor cortex (area F5) in monkeys [e.g., 8,9,10].
Mirror neurons were discovered over twenty years ago in the ventral premotor region F5 of the macaque monkey.
The last monkey to be discovered in Africa was the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji) in Tanzania in 2003, nearly two decades after the last find, the sun-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus solatus) in Gabon, in 1984.
It was four months ago that Darwin the trend forecasting monkey that was discovered in the halls of a Toronto IKEA reassembled our hearts and kept the internet's attention for longer than one day.
A heart condition in tamarin monkeys, for example, was discovered decades before the same problem was identified in humans.
Photo: About 60 unpublished photographs from the Scopes Monkey Trial have been discovered in the Smithsonian Institution's archives.
Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council in Rome and colleagues studied a group of the monkeys in Brazil that was discovered in 2003 to use stones as hammers to open palm nuts, which are difficult to crack.
