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Comment
. 2013 Sep 24;110(39):E3683-4.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1310334110.

Reply to Smaers: Getting human frontal lobes in proportion

Robert A Barton, Chris Venditti
Comment

Reply to Smaers: Getting human frontal lobes in proportion

Robert A Barton et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Reanalysis of data from Smaers et al. (3). Regressions fitted by phylogenetic generalized least-squares regression, as in ref. . Humans are indicated by an open circle, apes by gray circles, and other anthropoid primates by black circles. Dashed lines are 95% prediction intervals for values of y relative to x. Arrows indicate orangutan, which, unlike humans, has a significant positive residual in both regressions. Instead of interpreting this finding as indicative of orangutan cognitive attributes, we reiterate our caution about overinterpretation of such outliers in single studies, compared with finding consistent patterns across independent datasets.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • Human frontal lobes are not relatively large.
    Barton RA, Venditti C. Barton RA, et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 May 28;110(22):9001-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1215723110. Epub 2013 May 13. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013. PMID: 23671074 Free PMC article.
  • How humans stand out in frontal lobe scaling.
    Smaers JB. Smaers JB. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Sep 24;110(39):E3682. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308850110. Epub 2013 Sep 12. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013. PMID: 24029020 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

References

    1. Smaers JB. How humans stand out in frontal lobe scaling. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2013;110:E3682. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Schoenemann PT, Sheehan MJ, Glotzer LD. Prefrontal white matter volume is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates. Nat Neurosci. 2005;8(2):242–252. - PubMed
    1. Smaers JB, et al. Primate prefrontal cortex evolution: Human brains are the extreme of a lateralized ape trend. Brain Behav Evol. 2011;77(2):67–78. - PubMed
    1. Barton RA, Venditti C. Human frontal lobes are not relatively large. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2013;110(22):9001–9006. - PMC - PubMed

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