2014
DOI: 10.3389/fnana.2014.00046
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The elephant brain in numbers

Abstract: What explains the superior cognitive abilities of the human brain compared to other, larger brains? Here we investigate the possibility that the human brain has a larger number of neurons than even larger brains by determining the cellular composition of the brain of the African elephant. We find that the African elephant brain, which is about three times larger than the human brain, contains 257 billion (109) neurons, three times more than the average human brain; however, 97.5% of the neurons in the elephant… Show more

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Cited by 113 publications
(106 citation statements)
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References 57 publications
(107 reference statements)
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“…Humans, by contrast, have three times more neurons in the cerebral cortex than the African elephant [22], but require a much larger 8-9 h of sleep daily [7]. I propose that the reason why humans and other primates as a whole require many more hours of sleep for a similar number of cortical neurons than non-primates is that because of the way the primate cortex evolved to be built, this number of neurons is accompanied by a larger D/A in primates than in non-primates.…”
Section: (D) Implications For Mammalian Evolutionmentioning
confidence: 99%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…Humans, by contrast, have three times more neurons in the cerebral cortex than the African elephant [22], but require a much larger 8-9 h of sleep daily [7]. I propose that the reason why humans and other primates as a whole require many more hours of sleep for a similar number of cortical neurons than non-primates is that because of the way the primate cortex evolved to be built, this number of neurons is accompanied by a larger D/A in primates than in non-primates.…”
Section: (D) Implications For Mammalian Evolutionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Here I examine this second prediction that total sleep duration decreases together with neuronal density mm 22 across mammalian species and in their development. To this end, I present an analysis of a set of 24 species belonging to six mammalian clades for which cortical numbers of neurons, neuronal density and surface area were available [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], as well as data for total number of sleep hours per day [7]. Data are provided in table 1.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The largest number of cortical neurons in non-primate mammals is found in the false killer whale with 10 500 million and the African elephant with 11 000 million, which is less than the number found in humans, despite the much larger brains of the former two. Herculano-Houzel et al [35] reported a much lower number of 5600 million neurons in the African elephant, which is about one-third of the number of neurons found in the human cerebral cortex. The reason for this is that the cortices of whales and elephants, despite their very large surface area, are much thinner, their cortical neurons are much larger and accordingly their NPDs are much lower.…”
Section: The Cortex As a Dominant Contributor To The 'Seat' Of Intellmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…For instance, the largest land mammal, the elephant, has a cerebral cortex that weighs twice as much as the human cortex. However, because the brains of different animals are built in different ways, the elephant's gigantic cortex has only a third of the neurons that humans have in their cerebral cortex [3,4]. The lesson here is that size may be important, but it is far from everything when it comes to comparing brains.…”
Section: Carnivoresmentioning
confidence: 98%