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General information
Reconstructing the evolution of brain information-processing capacity is paramount for understanding the rise of complex cognition. The evolution of brain processing capacity has traditionally been inferred from data on brain size. However, to get a less biased picture of the evolutionary paths leading to high cognitive power, we need to compare brains not by mass but by numbers of neurons, which are their basic computational units. Therefore, a finer-grained approach is needed to reveal the evolutionary paths to increased cognitive capacity. Using a new, comprehensive dataset, we will analyze brain cellular composition across lizards. This study will be reconstructing the evolution of brains across rock lizard genus Darevskia by directly analyzing neuron numbers by using the largest dataset of its kind and including essential data on reptiles.
