Normative brain size variation and brain shape diversity in humans
Reardon PK., Seidlitz J., Vandekar S., Liu S., Patel R., Park MTM., Alexander-Bloch A., Clasen LS., Blumenthal JD., Lalonde FM., Giedd JN., Gur RC., Gur RE., Lerch JP., Chakravarty MM., Satterthwaite TD., Shinohara RT., Raznahan A.
Shifts in brain regions with brain size Brain size among normal humans varies as much as twofold. Reardon et al. surveyed the cortical and subcortical structure of more than 3000 human brains by noninvasive imaging (see the Perspective by Van Essen). They found that the scaling of different regions across the range of brain sizes is not consistent: Some brain regions are metabolically costly and are favored in larger brains. This shifts the balance between associative and sensorimotor brain systems in a brain size–dependent way. Science , this issue p. 1222 ; see also p. 1184