New Britain Herald Newspaper, June 28, 1929, Page 30

Mile. Coupin in the Paris l‘:nfllnry Where She Carried * on the Research Work With the Brains of Men and Monkeys Which Resulied in Her Unusual Discoveries. The Skeleton on the Table Before Her Is That of & Young Gorilla. Note the Size of the Head. HE most thrilling and highly con- troversial question that Science has striven to answer within the past one hundred years is: Did man descend from the same source as the monkey? Court battles, debates and even fist fights have resulted from the sharp differences of opinion. Now come the startling discoveries of a girl scientist in Paris which may soon set- tle the matter once and for all. The young woman is Mlle. Coupin, daughter of a professor at the Sor- bonne University and granddaughter of the famous French mathematician, Victor Coupin. For the past five years has worked quietly and obscurely in a Paris laboratory, studying the brains of men and monkeys and meas- uring them. Recently she read before the French Academy of Science a paper revealing her findings. The reading took place behind closed doors, but after it was over the foremost scientists of France united to award Mlle. Coupin the high- est_honors of their organization. The girl scientist’s discoveries sup- ort the newest theory that man did OT descend from the monkey, but belonged from the first to a branch of the animal family clos: associated to the monkey up. 1le. Coupin found that a monkey's brain is funda- mentally different from the brain of a man and does not develop in the same way. She also discovered just why the monkey’s brain stops devel- oping at a very early age and why man’s continues to develop. Experts say her new facts on brain growth will completely revolutionize many old theories on animal intelligence. In this article the word monkey fis used to denote all forms of ape and monkey life. But before we consider in detail the results of Mlle. Coupin’s findings, let us set down the high lights of her facts. The brains of monkeys attain their full size when the animals are between the ages of two and three years. The brains of human beings reach full size at some point between the ages of seven and fifteen. Some human brains go on growing much longer than others. The physical development of man’s brain, which is different from increase in size, continues much longer. It generally stops between the ages of thirty and forty, but his intelligence can and does continue to develop long after the actual development of the brain stops. o The development of intelligence in the monkey, on the other hand, seems to stop between the ages of two and three, when the actual growth of his brain’ stops. The brain of the average human being decreases in volume from the age of forty to ninety, even though his intelligence may continue at full force or even seem to increase. The brain cells of women endure the test of time better than the brain cells of men. A chimpanzee or a gorilla is much more highly developed in intelligence ERRRTT N Study the Skull Formation of the Baby Chimpansee Above in Comparison With That of the Full-Grown Chimpanzee at Rightt The Young Chimp's Head Is Shaped Very Like That of a Human Being, But in the Adult Animal the Bra Flattened and the Formation of the Skull Is Decidedly Different. at birth than a baby and the physi- cal contours of his brain are more highly developed than the baby’s brain. After birth the chimpanzee or the gorilla develops much more rapidly than the b-gy—for a short time. But when the monkey is two or three years old an abrupt change comes. The animal has reached its full development and from then on it degenerates and brute propensi- ties make their appearance. On the other hand the child goes on de- veloping as his brain grows. A table of brain weights com- piled by Mlle. Coupin shows that the body of .ap unborn child weighs five times as much as its brain, while the body of an unborn gorilla weighs sixteen times as much as its brain. But when the child grows up its bedy weighs thirty-two times as much as its brain while the gorilla’s body is two hundred times heavier than its brain. There are no definite contours in the brains of monkeys before birth, which remain, but in man these con- tours are definite and they never change essentially in shape. The brain of a monkey slightly re- sembles that of a man at birth, but as the monkey grows older the brain gradually becomes elongated and flat. This is illustrated by the two photo- graphs of a chimpanzee on this page. As the monkey’s brain flattens it grows toward the back of the head instead of toward the front as entict Found When O Midined -~ the Brains of Men and Monkeys Mlle. Coupin Explains Why Ape Babies Are Smarter Than Human Ones, but Soon Fall Behind in the Intelligence Race and Can Never Be ¢ This Diagram Shows Three Interesting (hmlr-rimnl. (A) (B) Is the Brain of a Baby Macacus Monkey, Is the Brain of a Young Chimpanzee, (C) Is the Brain of s New-Horn Child. in the case of human beings. In man the fissures or convolu- tions of the brain are complicated, in monkeys they are simple curves or almost straight. There are three times as many convolutions in the brain of a man as in a chim- panzee, the most highly developed of the apes. Another diagram on this page shows this interesting dif- ference strikingly. Note the an Important Indication of Intelligence. ifference in Brain Fissures, Which are Mlle. Coupin believes that this difference in the brain fissures gives us the most important key in ng just why manm is more in- telligent than the monkey. This dis- covery, combined with the others just enumerated, also support the girl scientist’s contention that even the highest form of ape life is separated definitely from that of man. She believes that in prehistorie dlin. when man's intelligence was only moderately developed, the physical structure of his brain was much the same as it is now. Be cause of the latent power he pos- sessed man was avle to make steady progress and develop his mind. The monkey, even in his highest form, had no such opportunity. The physical handicaps of his brain structure, which have been known to some extent, but have never be- fore been carefully measured and NEWLY BORN ADULT Diagram Showing How the Contours of the Human Brain Remaine Approximately the Same From the Time It Develops in the Unborn Child Until It Reaches the This Is in Contrast to the Monkey Brain, Which Flattens Out. Adult Stage. Kewipaper Festure Servies, 1929, “Bimbo,” s Young Gorilla Recently Bronght From Africa to the Philadelnhia Zno. He Is Shown Here With Who Becume His Close F More Intelligent Emerson Brown of the Zoo and a Litile Girl Bimbo, Who Is Less Than a Year Old, Is Much han a Human Baby of the Same Age, But in Another Year or Two He Will Have Reached the Limit of His Brain Power. Mile. Coupin Tells Why on This Page. tested, were such that they could not be overcome. Man and monkey both lived in the wilderness in ancient times and they were surreunded by enemies. It woula seem as if the monkey had the advan- tage in that environmert because his brain was so much finer an instrument at birth than a baby’s. But the baby was protected by his parents, so that he overcame the head-start which the monkey had. By the time the baby was grown up he had out-stripped his anthropoid brother of the forests. But man left the forest and created towns and cities until, finally, he dominated the life of the entire world. The monkey, on the other hand, stayed in the jungle because his retarded brain development did not permit him to create any other life for himself. Many scientists have believed that with the proper training monkeys could be taught to talk and so over- come their jungle environment, but no one has ever been able to teach a monkey the language of human beings. Mlle. Coupin's experiments explain conclusively just why these patient ex- periments have resulted in failure. No power in the hands of man could make the monkey’s brain develop be- yond the point that Nature had arbi- trarily set for it. Chimpanze®, the most highly developed of the apes, have been taught to do many extraor- dinary things when they were young. In every case, however, the training came to an abrupt stop as the little animal reached maturitv. Then the rever- sion to savagery would make its ap- pearance, just as it does to a more pro- nounced extent with a baby lion. And the brain-case of the skull, which had re- sembled that of & human being’s at birth, would slowly change in shape as the monkey brain flattened out toward the back of the head. The study of the brain of man has been one of the most baffling and prolonged in the his- tory of science. Sir Arthur Keith, fa- mous British scien- tist, has called it Nature’s master- piece and suggested that governments should spend more time and money on the study of it, since it is the sole organ concerned in the maintenance of civilization. It was formerly thought that mass was perhaps the sole determining fac- tor in gauging the power of the hu- man brain, but science knows now that that is not true. Balance and the mys- terious convolutions that are so no- ticeable in man’s brain are now be. lieved to be truer indications of in- telligence. Yet mass is certainly one determin- ing factor. When the human brain falls short of thirty-two ounces its owner is an imbecile. No exception has been found to this rule by science, but on the other hand some great men have had. comparatively small brains. The brain of Anatole France weighed only thirty-six ounces. _ Professor Constantin Economo, a distinguished Viennese neurologist, has recently made an exact census of the living units within the cortex or gray matter, which is the essential part of the human brain. He found that a man with a brain weighing forty-eight ounces had in the neighborhood of fourteen billion living units, or neurons, in the gray matter. - These units were bodies giving oft living filaments, or nerve fi%len, and the latter connected with all parts of the body like the telegraph system of a great city. The filaments made up seventy per cent of the brain matter and the neurons, or living cells, only four per cent. From this brief description of the marvelously intricate and sensitive system of broadcasting that on constantly in the human b it is easy to see how even slight differences between the brains of .monkeys and those of men can produce enormous differences in the quality of intelli- gence produced by the two instru. ments, The telegraph system that is made of neurons and filaments in the mon- key’s brain is much less eompliuted than the similar system in man's brain because of the smaller number of fissures and the ‘fundamental differ. ence in structure discovered by Mlle. Coupin. But most important.of all, the indi- . cations point to the truth of the girl scientist's assertion that the monkey's brain lacked from the first the possi- bility of continued development that obviously exists in the human brain. The dividing line between the twe types of brain is sharp. It should be a comfort to all of us to know that our brains can develop until long after maturity and that we ourselves can contribute to that development.