The numbers and proportion of neurons in areas and regions of cortex were determined for a single cortical hemisphere from two prosimian galagos, one New World owl monkey, one Old World macaque monkey, and one baboon. The results suggest that there is a common plan of cortical organization across the species examined here and also differences that suggest greater specializations in the Old World monkeys. In all primates examined, primary visual cortex (V1) was the most neuron-dense cortical area and the secondary visual areas had higher-than-average densities. Primary auditory and somatosensory areas tended to have high densities in the Old World macaque and baboon. Neuronal density varies less across cortical areas in prosimian galagos than in the Old World monkeys. Thus, cortical architecture varies greatly within and across primate species, but cell density is greater in cortex devoted to the early stages of sensory processing.

Primates are usually found to have richer behavioral repertoires and better cognitive abilities than rodents of similar brain size. This finding raises the possibility that primate brains differ from rodent brains in their cellular composition. Here we examine the cellular scaling rules for primate brains and show that brain size increases approximately isometrically as a function of cell numbers, such that an 11× larger brain is built with 10× more neurons and ≈12× more nonneuronal cells of relatively constant average size. This isometric function is in contrast to rodent brains, which increase faster in size than in numbers of neurons. As a consequence of the linear cellular scaling rules, primate brains have a larger number of neurons than rodent brains of similar size, presumably endowing them with greater computational power and cognitive abilities.