ON cortical columns in brain

Neuroscientists find cortical columns in brain not uniform, challenging large-scale simulation models

October 25, 2013

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Cell-type-specific 3D reconstruction of five neighboring barrel columns in rat vibrissal cortex (credit: Marcel Oberlaender et al.)

Despite a long-held scientific belief that cortex is built up by repeatedly occurring elementary units called cortical columns, a new study by neuroscientists has found that the structure of the brain’s cortical columns can largely deviate within individual animals, and even within a specific cortical area.

The study also found that these structural differences are not arbitrary, but reflect organizational and functional properties of the peripheral sensory organs.

The study was based on recent advances in high-resolution imaging and reconstruction techniques (confocal microscopy and automated image-processing routines) developed by Dr. Oberlaender at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, enabling researchers to automatically and reliably detect the 3D location and type of every nerve cell throughout the entire brain.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (open access), and conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI),  the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPIBC) in Tuebingen, Germany, these findings promise to open new avenues of research on brain organization and sensory information processing./.../