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Published March 16, 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

The scaling of frontal cortex in primates and carnivores

Abstract

Size has a profound effect on the structure of the brain. Many brain structures scale allometrically, that is, their relative size changes systematically as a function of brain size. Here we use independent contrasts analysis to examine the scaling of frontal cortex in 43 species of mammals including 25 primates and 15 carnivores. We find evidence for significant differences in scaling between primates and carnivores. Primate frontal cortex hyperscales relative to the rest of neocortex and the rest of the brain. The slope of frontal cortex contrasts on rest of cortex contrasts is 1.18 (95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.30) for primates, which is significantly greater than isometric. It is also significantly greater than the carnivore value of 0.94 (95% confidence interval, 0.82-1.07). This finding supports the idea that there are substantial differences in frontal cortex structure and development between the two groups.

Additional Information

© 2004 by the National Academy of Sciences. Edited by Charles F. Stevens, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved January 12, 2004 (received for review September 9, 2003). This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office. We thank Wally Welker and Inge Siggelkow for access to the Wisconsin brain collection. We also thank Eric Ahrens for kindly providing MR data and Elwyn Simons for providing an Aegyptopithecus zeuxis endocast. Rizvan Mamet made suggestions on the analysis, and Wulf Haubensak provided German translation help. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant EY11759 and the W. M. Keck Foundation Fund for Discovery in Basic Medical Research at the California Institute of Technology.

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