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Increasing the Brain’s Capacity: Neocortex, New Neurons, and Hemispheric Specialization

  • Chapter
Comparative Vertebrate Cognition

Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

Brain size has been linked to cognitive capacity and intelligence, but this association is largely an intuitive assumption rather than one that has received unequivocal empirical support. This assumption has a long history dating back to the flurry of active measurement of the human brain in the 1800s, when “races” were ranked according to brain size and the assumed superiority of men over women was said to be couched in their larger brain size (Gould, 1981; Kaplan and Rogers, 1994, 2003). A similar line of thinking has been applied to non-human animals. Over many years, species have been ranked according to brain size, and now there is revived interest in doing so, especially in ranking species according to both brain size and cognitive abilities. It is timely, therefore, to see what light these studies, with emphasis on the recent ones, might shed on our topic of debate, “Are primates special in terms of their cognitive abilities?”

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  1. Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behavior School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Lesley Rogers

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  1. Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour School of Biological, Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351, Australia

    Lesley J. Rogers  & Gisela Kaplan  & 

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Rogers, L. (2004). Increasing the Brain’s Capacity: Neocortex, New Neurons, and Hemispheric Specialization. In: Rogers, L.J., Kaplan, G. (eds) Comparative Vertebrate Cognition. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8913-0_9

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