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"No, the human brain does not have more neurons than the much larger elephant brain—but the human cerebral cortex has nearly three times as many neurons as the

"No, the human brain does not have more neurons than the much larger elephant brain—but the human cerebral cortex has nearly three times as many neurons as the over twice as large cerebral cortex of the elephant." Does the mass of neurons in the cerebellum give the ele' any greater capability? Longer memory for revenge, perhaps?

nickledave 9y ago
Probably has to do with control of the trunk and "infrasonic vocalizations" http://www.karger.com/Article/PDF/345565 http://www.karger.com/Article/PDF/345565 if you believe the cerebellum mainly contributes to movement. Some argue that it also contributes to "cognition", as Herculano-Houzel points out. Interesting that her group previously reported that, across evolution, brains maintain a linear relationship between number of neurons in neocortex and number of neurons in the cerebellum: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20300467/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20300467/. The finding that 97.5% of neurons in the elephant brain are in the cerebellum would seem to contradict the idea that brains maintain a constant neocortical/cerebellar neuron ratio. The elephant paper attributes the huge number of cerebellar neurons to sensorimotor input, i.e., probably trunk stuff: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4053853/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4053853/