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An evolutionary scaling law for the primate visual system and its basis in cortical function

Nature volume 411, pages 193–195 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

A hallmark of mammalian brain evolution is the disproportionate increase in neocortical size as compared with subcortical structures1. Because primary visual cortex (V1) is the most thoroughly understood cortical region, the visual system provides an excellent model in which to investigate the evolutionary expansion of neocortex. I have compared the numbers of neurons in the visual thalamus (lateral geniculate nucleus; LGN) and area V1 across primate species. Here I find that the number of V1 neurons increases as the 3/2 power of the number of LGN neurons. As a consequence of this scaling law, the human, for example, uses four times as many V1 neurons per LGN neuron (356) to process visual information as does a tarsier (87). I argue that the 3/2 power relationship is a natural consequence of the organization of V1, together with the requirement that spatial resolution in V1 should parallel the maximum resolution provided by the LGN. The additional observation that thalamus/neocortex follows the same evolutionary scaling law as LGN/V1 may suggest that neocortex generally conforms to the same organizational principle as V1.

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Figure 1: Number of neurons in VI (N ) as a function of number of LGN neurons (n) for 23 haplorhine primates.
Figure 2: The volume of VI as a function of LGN volume for 23 haplorhines (circles), together with data from 24 different human specimens (squares).
Figure 3: Volume of VI (circles) and all of neocortex (squares) as a function of LGN and total thalamus volume.

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Acknowledgements

Much of the work described here was done at the Santa Fe Institute and the Aspen Center for Physics, and I thank those institutions for their support. I also thank T. Albright, S. Gandhi and I. Brivanlou for comments on an earlier draft.

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  1. The Salk Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    Charles F. Stevens

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Correspondence to Charles F. Stevens.

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Stevens, C. An evolutionary scaling law for the primate visual system and its basis in cortical function. Nature 411, 193–195 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35075572

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