Modeling local and cross-species neuron number variations in the cerebral cortex as arising from a common mechanism.

ABSTRACT: A massive increase in the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, driving its size to increase by five orders of magnitude, is a key feature of mammalian evolution. Not only are there systematic variations in cerebral cortical architecture across species, but also across spatial axes within a given cortex. In this article we present a computational model that accounts for both types of variation as arising from the same developmental mechanism. The model employs empirically measured parameters from over a dozen species to demonstrate that changes to the kinetics of neurogenesis (the cell-cycle rate, the progenitor death rate, and the "quit rate," i.e., the ratio of terminal cell divisions) are sufficient to explain the great diversity in the number of cortical neurons across mammals. Mor

SUBMITTER: Cahalane DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4267349 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature