Oct. 8, 2013 — The part of the brain that makes humans and primates social creatures may play a similar role in carnivores, according to a growing body of research by a Michigan State University neuroscientist.
In studying spotted hyenas, lions and, most recently, the raccoon family, Sharleen Sakai has found a correlation between the size of the animals' frontal cortex and their social nature.
In her latest study, Sakai examined the digitally recreated brains of three species in the Procyonid family -- the raccoon, the coatimundi and the kinkajou -- and found the coatimundi had the largest frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is thought to regulate social interaction, and the coatimundi is by far the most social of the three animals, often living in bands of 20 or more.
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is published in the research journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution.
"Most neuroscience research that looks at how brains evolve has focused primarily on primates, so nobody really knows what the frontal cortex in a carnivore does," said Sakai, professor of psychology. "These findings suggest the frontal cortex is processing social information in carnivores perhaps similar to what we've seen in monkeys and humans."
Sakai did the most recent study in her neuroscience lab with Bradley Arsznov, a former MSU doctoral student who's now an assistant professor of psychology at Minnesota State University.
Her latest study was based on the findings from 45 adult Procyonid skulls acquired from university museum collections (17 coatimundis, 14 raccoons and 14 kinkajous). The researchers used computed tomography, or CT scans, and sophisticated software to digitally "fill in" the areas where the brains would have been.
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