Brain communication, defined as information transmission through white-matter connections, is at the foundation of the brain's computational capacities that subtend almost all aspects of behavior: from sensory perception shared across mammalian species, to complex cognitive functions in humans. How did communication strategies in macroscale brain networks adapt across evolution to accomplish increasingly complex functions? By applying a graph- and information-theory approach to assess information-related pathways in male mouse, macaque and human brains, we show a brain communication gap between selective information transmission in non-human mammals, where brain regions share information through single polysynaptic pathways, and parallel information transmission in humans, where regions share information through multiple parallel pathways. In humans, parallel transmission acts as a major connector between unimodal and transmodal systems.
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