Anterior commissure versus corpus callosum: A quantitative comparison across mammals

Mammals rely on two major pathways to transfer information between the two hemispheres of the brain: the anterior commissure and the corpus callosum. Metatheria and monotremes rely exclusively on the anterior commissure for interhemispheric transfer between the isocortices and olfactory allocortices of each side, whereas Eutheria use a combination of the anterior commissure and an additional pathway exclusive to Eutheria, the corpus callosum. Midline cross-sectional area of the anterior commissure and corpus callosum were measured in a range of mammals from all three infraclasses and plotted against brain volume to determine how midline anterior commissure area and its size relative to the corpus callosum vary with brain size and taxon. In Metatheria, the square root of anterior commissure area rises in almost direct proportion with the cube root of brain volume (i.e. the ratio of the two is relatively constant), whereas among Eutheria the ratio of the square root of anterior commissure area to the cube root of brain volume declines slightly with increasing brain size. The total of isocortical and olfactory allocortical commissure area rises more rapidly with increasing brain volume among Eutheria than among Metatheria. This means that the midline isocortical and olfactory allocortical commissural area of metatherians with large brains (about 70 ml) is only about 50% of that among eutherians with similarly sized brains. On the other hand, isocortical and olfactory allocortical commissural area is similar in Metatheria and Eutheria at brain volumes around 1 ml. Among the Eutheria, some groups make less use of the anterior commissure pathway than do others: soricomorphs, rodents and cetaceans have smaller anterior commissures for their brain size than do afrosoricids, erinaceomorphs and proboscideans. The findings suggest that use of the anterior commissural route for isocortical commissural connections may have placed limitations on interhemispheric transfer of information among the metatherians, but only when brain size reaches 50 ml or more.