brain complexity: does size control mental capacity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 26, 2020, 00:19 (1305 days ago) @ David Turell

Not in animal studies:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200925113353.htm

"A research team has systematically investigated the cognitive abilities of lemurs, which have relatively small brains compared to other primates. Conducting systematic tests with identical methods revealed that cognitive abilities of lemurs hardly differ from those of monkeys and great apes. Instead, this study revealed that the relationship between brain size and cognitive abilities cannot be generalized and it provides new insights into the evolution of primates.

"A research team from the German Primate Center (DPZ) -- Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen has for the first time systematically investigated the cognitive abilities of lemurs, which have relatively small brains compared to other primates. Conducting systematic tests with identical methods revealed that cognitive abilities of lemurs hardly differ from those of monkeys and great apes. Instead, this study revealed that the relationship between brain size and cognitive abilities cannot be generalized and it provides new insights into the evolution of cognitive abilities in primates.

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"Initial studies have shown that children possess a better social intelligence than non-human primates. In the physical domain, however, the species hardly differed even though they show great variation in their relative brain sizes.

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"The results of the new study show that despite their smaller brains lemurs' average cognitive performance in the tests of the PCTB was not fundamentally different from the performances of the other primate species. This is even true for mouse lemurs, which have brains about 200 times smaller than those of chimpanzees and orangutans. Only in tests examining spatial reasoning primate species with larger brains performed better. However, no systematic differences in species performances were neither found for the understanding of causal and numerical relationships nor in tests of the social domain. Neither diet, nor social system or brain size could explain the results from the PCTB experiments. "With our study we show that cognitive abilities cannot be generalized, but that species instead differ in domain-specific cognitive skills," says Claudia Fichtel, one of the two first authors of the study funded by the German Research Foundation. "Accordingly, the relationship between brain size and cognitive abilities cannot be generalized.'"

Comment: The corvids show it is not bulk size but neuron count and network complexity But as humans show overall bulk does help if enough neurons and networks are added. The elephants and whales lack that additive.