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> Humans have more neurons in this region than any other mammal by far. Except dolphins, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_
by 05 11y ago
> Humans have more neurons in this region than any other mammal by far.
Except dolphins, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons#Cerebral_cortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
- leepowers 10y agoOne species of dolphin, specifically the long-finned pilot whale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-finned_pilot_whale#Physiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-finned_pilot_whale#Physio... It adds a wrinkle, but appears to be larger due to brain volume rather than density: However, as neuron density in long-finned pilot whales is lower than that in humans, their higher cell number appears to be due to their larger brain. .... Our results underscore that correlations between cognitive performance and absolute neocortical neuron numbers across animal orders or classes are of limited value - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244864/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244864/ Which I take to mean we shouldn't rely on one indicator to explain the emergence of consciousness. It used to be thought that brain size dictated intelligence. Corvid tool is one challenge to that assumption. We shouldn't replace brain size with neuron size. It looks like evolution fleshed out multiple paths to achieving certain reasoning behaviors.