I think Herculano-Houzel would want to mention that humans have 3x (iirc) more neurons in their cerebral cortex than even the elephant species with the biggest brains. Those elephants have more total neurons because their cerebellar cortices have like 200 billion neurons. Humans have more cortical neurons than any animal, including blue whales, because neuron sizes scale differently for different Orders and primates specifically scale well.
Crucially, people have thought human brains were special among primates but she makes the point that it’s the other great apes that are special in having smaller brains according to primate brain scaling laws. This is because humans either had a unique incentive to keep up with the costs of scaling or because they had a unique ability to keep up with the costs (due to e.g. cooking).
Having better algorithms that could take advantage of scale fits with her views, I think.
I think Herculano-Houzel would want to mention that humans have 3x (iirc) more neurons in their cerebral cortex than even the elephant species with the biggest brains. Those elephants have more total neurons because their cerebellar cortices have like 200 billion neurons. Humans have more cortical neurons than any animal, including blue whales, because neuron sizes scale differently for different Orders and primates specifically scale well.
Crucially, people have thought human brains were special among primates but she makes the point that it’s the other great apes that are special in having smaller brains according to primate brain scaling laws. This is because humans either had a unique incentive to keep up with the costs of scaling or because they had a unique ability to keep up with the costs (due to e.g. cooking).
Having better algorithms that could take advantage of scale fits with her views, I think.