Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons

Abstract

The best way to fold a mammalian brain As mammalian brains grew larger through evolution, the organization and folding of brains changed too. In a series of statistical analyses comparing a large number of mammalian species, Mota and Herculano-Houzel found that brain folding is not simply a phylogenetic consequence of brain mass increase (see the Perspective by Striedter and Srinivasan). The exposed surface of the cortex scales across all mammals and across individuals as a single power law of the product of total cortical surface and the square root of cortical thickness. Science , this issue p. 74 ; see also p. 31