ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Modeling local and cross-species neuron number variations in the cerebral cortex as arising from a common mechanism.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Traces of phylogeny and ecology in hippocampal neuron numbers.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Transcriptomic profiles link corticostriatal microarchitecture to genetics of neurodevelopment and neuropsychiatric risks.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Geometric influences on the regional organization of the mammalian brain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Morphological and Metabolic Features of Brain Aging in Rodents, Ruminants, Carnivores, and Non-Human Primates.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- The flattening of spacetime hierarchy of theNational science review · 2024Article
- Neuronal composition of processing modules in human V1: laminar density for neuronal and non-neuronal populations and a comparison with macaque.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Going beyond established model systems of Alzheimer's disease: companion animals provide novel insights into the neurobiology of aging.Communications biology · 2023Review
- Mapping Human Brain Pathways: Challenges and Opportunities in the Integration of Scales.Brain, behavior and evolution · 2023Review
- Article
- Brain Plasticity in Humans and Model Systems: Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Creative Destruction: A Basic Computational Model of Cortical Layer Formation.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2021Article
- Cortical hierarchy, dual counterstream architecture and the importance of top-down generative networks.NeuroImage · 2021Review
- Length of the Neurogenic Period-A Key Determinant for the Generation of Upper-Layer Neurons During Neocortex Development and Evolution.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Review
- Comparative Functional Anatomy of Marmoset Brains.ILAR journal · 2020Article
- Systematic modelling of the development of laminar projection origins in the cerebral cortex: Interactions of spatio-temporal patterns of neurogenesis and cellular heterogeneity.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Brain Wiring and Supragranular-Enriched Genes Linked to Protracted Human Frontal Cortex Development.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2020Article
- Closing the gap from transcription to the structural connectome enhances the study of connections in the human brain.Developmental dynamics : an official publication of the American Association of Anatomists · 2020Review
- Shaping brain structure: Genetic and phylogenetic axes of macroscale organization of cortical thickness.Science advances · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
A massive increase in the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, driving its size to increase by five orders of magnitude, is a key feature of mammalian evolution. Not only are there systematic variations in cerebral cortical architecture across species, but also across spatial axes within a given cortex. In this article we present a computational model that accounts for both types of variation as arising from the same developmental mechanism. The model employs empirically measured parameters from over a dozen species to demonstrate that changes to the kinetics of neurogenesis (the cell-cycle rate, the progenitor death rate, and the "quit rate," i.e., the ratio of terminal cell divisions) are sufficient to explain the great diversity in the number of cortical neurons across mammals. Moreover, spatiotemporal gradients in those same parameters in the embryonic cortex can account for cortex-wide, graded variations in the mature neural architecture. Consistent with emerging anatomical data in several species, the model predicts (i) a greater complement of neurons per cortical column in the later-developing, posterior regions of intermediate and large cortices, (ii) that the extent of variation across a cortex increases with cortex size, reaching fivefold or greater in primates, and (iii) that when the number of neurons per cortical column increases, whether across species or within a given cortex, it is the later-developing superficial layers of the cortex which accommodate those additional neurons. We posit that these graded features of the cortex have computational and functional significance, and so must be subject to evolutionary selection.
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