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DIVERGING LINES. “Because of the diverging power laws that relate brain size and number of neurons across rodents and primates, the latter can hold more neurons in the same brain volume, with larger neuronal densities than found in rodents.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

INDUCED PLASTICITY FOR LEARNING. "These results suggest that early visual areas are so plastic that mere inductions of activity patterns are sufficient to cause VPL. This technique can induce plasticity in a highly selective manner, potentially leading to powerful training and rehabilitative protocols." https://lnkd.in/dXgJjGG View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this journey into the arcane discussion of whose brain is bigger, and the vain search for evidence of human exceptionalism. Nature teaches us that natural diversity is enormous and there are Bell Curves in most things, but more, that exceptionalism of a single species is conflated nonsense, coming from a long tradition of being at the center of the universe, and at the top of the ladder of being. View in LinkedIn

THE REAL MEASURE. “Quantitative changes in the neuronal composition of the brain could therefore be a main driving force that, through the exponential combination of processing units, and therefore of computational abilities, leads to events that may look like “jumps” in the evolution of brains and intelligence.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn

MORE THAN MASS. “To conclude that the human brain is a linearly scaled-up primate brain, with just the expected number of neurons for a primate brain of its size, is not to state that it is the cognitive abilities of non-human primates and other large-brained animals progress, it becomes increasingly likely that humans do not have truly unique cognitive abilities, and hence must differ from these animals not qualitatively, but rather in the combination and extent of abilities such as theory of mind, imitation and social cognition.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/ View in LinkedIn