PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Eric Lewitus AU - Iva Kelava AU - Alex T. Kalinka AU - Pavel Tomancak AU - Wieland B Huttner TI - An Adaptive Threshold in Mammalian Neocortical Evolution AID - 10.1101/001289 DP - 2013 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 001289 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2013/12/13/001289.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2013/12/13/001289.full AB - Expansion of the neocortex is a hallmark of human evolution. However, it remains an open question what adaptive mechanisms facilitated its expansion. Here we show, using gyrencephaly index (GI) and other physiological and life-history data for 102 mammalian species, that gyrencephaly is an ancestral mammalian trait. We provide evidence that the evolution of a highly folded neocortex, as observed in humans, requires the traversal of a threshold of ∼109 neurons, and that species above and below the threshold exhibit a bimodal distribution of physiological and life-history traits, establishing two phenotypic groups. We identify, using discrete mathematical models, proliferative divisions of progenitors in the basal compartment of the developing neocortex as evolutionarily necessary and sufficient for generating a fourteen-fold increase in daily prenatal neuron production and thus traversal of the neuronal threshold. Finally, using RNA-seq data from fetal human neocortical germinal zones, we show a genomic correlate to the neuron threshold in the differential conservation of long intergenic non-coding RNA.(see arXiv:1304.5412)