The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable (MIT Press) by Suzana Herculano-Houzel

Author:Suzana Herculano-Houzel [Herculano-Houzel, Suzana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2016-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

It seems fitting that great apes, elephants, and probably cetaceans have similar numbers of neurons in the cerebral cortex, in the range of 3 to 9 billion: fewer than humans have, but more than all other mammals do. These are, many scientists think, the three groups of mammalian species that share a number of complex cognitive capabilities such as self-recognition in the mirror, vocal communication, and social cooperation to achieve a common purpose.

One could still argue that the human cerebral cortex is special, yes, in that it concentrates a number of neurons so large that it is unreachable for other species. How we managed to have this unprecedented and largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex without ever breaking away from the primate way of building a cortex is the subject of the final chapters of this book. In the meantime, there is a particular point to consider as part of the human advantage: not only do we have the largest absolute number of neurons in the cerebral cortex as a whole, but we might have a particularly enlarged cortex relative to the rest of the brain and a particularly enlarged prefrontal cortex within it.

But do we really?

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