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The elephant brain in numbers.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel1, Kamilla Avelino-de-Souza1, Kleber Neves1

  • 1Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ; Instituto Nacional de Neurociência Translacional São Paulo, Brazil.

Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
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Summary

Human brains have more neurons in the cerebral cortex than elephants, despite smaller size. This neuron distribution, not total neuron count, may explain superior human cognitive abilities compared to large-brained mammals.

Keywords:
brain sizecerebellumcerebral cortexelephantglia/neuron rationeuronal densitynumbers of neurons

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Comparative Anatomy
  • Cognitive Evolution

Background:

  • Human cognitive superiority is a long-standing question in neuroscience.
  • Brain size does not always correlate with cognitive capacity across species.
  • Understanding neuron distribution is key to explaining cognitive differences.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the cellular composition of the African elephant brain.
  • To compare neuron numbers and distribution in human and elephant brains.
  • To test the hypothesis linking human cognitive abilities to cerebral cortex neuron count.

Main Methods:

  • Determined the cellular composition of the African elephant brain.
  • Quantified neuron numbers in different brain regions (cerebellum, cerebral cortex).
  • Compared neuron counts and distribution with the human brain.

Main Results:

  • African elephant brains contain 257 billion neurons, three times more than human brains.
  • 97.5% of elephant neurons are in the cerebellum, an outlier distribution.
  • The elephant cerebral cortex has 5.6 billion neurons, one-third of the human count.

Conclusions:

  • The human cerebral cortex has a higher absolute neuron number than the elephant's.
  • This difference in cerebral cortex neuron count, not total brain neurons, correlates with human cognitive superiority.
  • Elephant's cerebellar neuron abundance may relate to sensorimotor specializations.