Neuro-evolutionary evidence for a universal fractal primate brain shape.

ABSTRACT: The cerebral cortex displays a bewildering diversity of shapes and sizes across and within species. Despite this diversity, we present a universal multi-scale description of primate cortices. We show that all cortical shapes can be described as a set of nested folds of different sizes. As neighbouring folds are gradually merged, the cortices of 11 primate species follow a common scale-free morphometric trajectory, that also overlaps with over 70 other mammalian species. Our results indicate that all cerebral cortices are approximations of the same archetypal fractal shape with a fractal dimension of d_f = 2.5. Importantly, this new understanding enables a more precise quantification of brain morphology as a function of scale. To demonstrate the importance of

SUBMITTER: Wang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11441977 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature