Kyoto, Japan -- In February 2023, a resident at Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior -- EHUB -- treated researchers to a spontaneous musical performance. Ayumu, a 26 year-old male chimpanzee, removed floorboards from a walkway and used them to drum while he let out complex and structured sounds similar to vocal expressions. It was something the researchers had never seen him do before.

Ayumu's drumming is nothing new. Chimpanzees are well know for their instrumental behaviors, and are particularly adept at drumming. But on this occasion, Ayumu's combination of drumming and vocalization -- exhibiting multiple rhythmic components -- was a completely novel case.

After recording 89 of Ayumu's spontaneous performances between February 2023 and March 2025, a team of EHUB researchers started analyzing the videos. The recordings also provided proof of the process by which Ayumu removed floorboards from the walkway and used them as tools to make music.

In a bid to better understand, and potentially treat, a host of conditions that affect early cognition, neurodevelopment and the brain later in life, investigators at Johns Hopkins Medicine and colleagues throughout the world have been mapping the molecular construction of the human brain. These models, which are supported in part by federal and international research grants, are helping researchers study genetic links and pathways involved in a variety of conditions, ranging from autism spectrum disorder, which affects about 1 in 31, or 3%, of children in the U.S., to Alzheimer’s disease, which is estimated to affect more than 7 million U.S. adults, including 1 in 9, or 11%, age 65 and older.   

To support this blueprint, Carlo Colantuoni, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and other researchers have, in their most recent study, which publishes March 25 in Nature Neuroscience, brought together data from nearly 200 published studies and more than 30 million cells to advance insight about how the neocortex, the outermost layers of the brain, develops and forms over time. This region of the brain is responsible for a variety of functions, including how we think, sense, process and store information, and make decisions.