What makes humans the dominant animal species on the planet? Much of the popular literature has emphasized similarities between humans and our closest animal relatives, especially the chimpanzee. But there can be no doubt that humans are special. A major human cognitive specialization is our ability to process conceptual information. We are able to form abstract concepts by combining sources of information and generalizing from current knowledge. These concepts can be invoked in the absence of immediate percepts and used to recognize exemplars not encountered before (e.g., recognizing a basset hound as a dog even after only encountering beagles in the past). To understand how our brain evolved the ability to process such conceptual information, we need to know what anatomical specializations occurred to allow this behavior. We still know little, but damage to the anterior temporal lobe in humans produces disruption to the production and manipulation of abstract concepts. We also know that the anterior temporal lobe has disproportionately expanded in the humans since our divergence from old world monkeys and that its connections with other parts of the brain have proliferated. Therefore, the goal of the current proposal is to investigate which anatomical specializations have developed in the human brain, compared to that of our closest animal relatives, and whether these are involved in the uniquely human ability to process conceptual information. We will use a combination of ineuroimaging techniques to investigate the organization of the human, chimpanzee, and macaque brains to identify parts of the temporal cortex that are unique to the human brain. Then, using functional neuroimaging in the human volunteers, we will test whether this unique area is indeed activated when people engage in the processing of conceptual information. Together, this presents a unique opportunity to study human uniqueness in a combined comparative and psychological project.

Current clinically approved drug delivery systems, such as liposome, PEGylated liposome, and polymeric micelle, predominantly rely on passive accumulation within tumor tissues by diffusion through the defective tumor vessels during circulation. The targeting efficacy toward cancer cells is very limited due to their inadequate interaction with cancer cells. The attachment of targeting ligands to nanocarriers has demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing binding affinity and, consequently, facilitating cellular uptake via receptor-mediated endocytosis. However, the conventional methods employed for ligand attachment suffer from harsh conditions, low efficiency, and limited control over ligand orientation. These drawbacks compromise the targeting performance and are believed to result in the current absence of a targeted drug delivery system on the market. In this project, we propose a simple, efficient, and mild attachment method to spontaneously activate on demand nanocarriers. This innovative approach has the potential to have a multi- level effect, first to revolutionize various fields, including drug delivery, diagnostics, and nanotechnology, by providing advanced tools for targeted therapies and diagnostics. Secondly, by developing novel methodologies that can be applied to existing technologies to enhance uptake, localization, and efficacy while minimizing systemic toxicity thus potentially shifting the health- economic balance for some treatments which were previously inaccessible.