What’s in a newborn brain? It’s a question we’re obsessed with, because its answers seem to promise us basic truths about what we humans are as a species before our culture muddies the waters. A paper in Nature Neuroscience this week shows that monkeys raised without exposure to faces don’t develop specialized face-recognition domains in their brains. The results help to explain our own brains a little better, and the research also sketches an idea of how environmental input might lead to specialized brain circuitry over time.

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