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عمومی::
نورون
Wrong: according to the evidence uncovered by the author, humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals because we have a brain built in the image of other primate brains that managed to gather the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex due to a technological innovation that allowed a larger caloric intake in less time: cooking.
Most of our studies apply the Isotropic Fractionator, a non-stereological method developed in the lab in 2005 that allows the fast, simple and reliable determination of numbers of neuronal and non-neuronal cells in any dissectable brain structure, and has been shown to be as reliable as stereology.
Brain size can no longer be considered a proxy for numbers of neurons in the brain across species, contrary to what has been common practice so far under the assumption that different brains followed the same scaling rules (reviewed in Herculano-Houzel, 2011, 2011, 2012 and Herculano-Houzel et al.
By comparing rodents, more rodents, primates, more primates, insectivores, afrotherians (including the elephant) and artiodactyls, we have been able to infer the ancestral neuronal scaling rules - that is, those that applied to the original mammals - and to deduce the changes that led to how the brain is put together in the different lineages, reviewed here.
The human brain is remarkable, yes - but turns out not to be special, at least not in its number of neurons, compared to other primates, and also not in its size, as long as great apes are left out of the comparison (and great apes, by the way, also have just as many neurons as a generic primate of their brain size would have).
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