A cortical column is a group of neurons forming a cylindrical structure through the cerebral cortex of the brain perpendicular to the cortical surface.[1] The structure was first identified by Mountcastle in 1957. He later identified minicolumns as the basic units of the neocortex which were arranged into columns.[2] Each contains the same types of neurons, connectivity, and firing properties.[3] Columns are also called hypercolumn, macrocolumn,[4]functional column[5] or sometimes cortical module.[6] Neurons within a minicolumn (microcolumn) encode similar features, whereas a hypercolumn "denotes a unit containing a full set of values for any given set of receptive field parameters".[7] A cortical module is defined as either synonymous with a hypercolumn (Mountcastle) or as a tissue block of multiple overlapping hypercolumns.[8]
Cortical columns are proposed to be the canonical microcircuits for predictive coding,[9] in which the process of cognition is implemented through a hierarchy of identical microcircuits.[3] The evolutionary benefit to this duplication allowed human neocortex to increase in size by almost 3-fold over just the last 3 million years.[3]
3D reconstruction of five cortical columns in rat vibrissal cortex
The columnar hypothesis states that the cortex is composed of discrete, modular columns of neurons, characterized by a consistent connectivity profile.[5] The columnar organization hypothesis is currently the most widely adopted to explain the cortical processing of information.[10]
^Mountcastle, Vernon (July 1957). "Modality and topographic properties of single neurons of cat's somatic sensory cortex". Journal of Neurophysiology. 20 (4): 408–34. doi:10.1152/jn.1957.20.4.408. PMID 13439410.
^Mountcastle, Vernon (1997). "The columnar organization of the neocortex". Brain. 120 (4): 701–722. doi:10.1093/brain/120.4.701. PMID 9153131.
^ abcBennett, Max (2020). "An Attempt at a Unified Theory of the Neocortical Microcircuit in Sensory Cortex". Frontiers in Neural Circuits. 14: 40. doi:10.3389/fncir.2020.00040. PMC 7416357. PMID 32848632.
^Buxhoeveden, D. P. (2002-05-01). "The minicolumn hypothesis in neuroscience". Brain. 125 (5): 935–951. doi:10.1093/brain/awf110. ISSN 0006-8950. PMID 11960884.
^ abLodato, Simona; Arlotta, Paola (2015-11-13). "Generating Neuronal Diversity in the Mammalian Cerebral Cortex". Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. 31 (1): 699–720. doi:10.1146/annurev-cellbio-100814-125353. PMC 4778709. PMID 26359774. Functional columns were first defined in the cortex by Mountcastle (1957), who proposed the columnar hypothesis, which states that the cortex is composed of discrete, modular columns of neurons, characterized by a consistent connectivity profile.
^Kolb, Bryan; Whishaw, Ian Q. (2003). Fundamentals of human neuropsychology. New York: Worth. ISBN 978-0-7167-5300-1.
^Horton JC, Adams DL (2005). "The cortical column: a structure without a function". Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 360 (1456): 837–862. doi:10.1098/rstb.2005.1623. PMC 1569491. PMID 15937015.
^Hubel, DH; Wiesel, TN (Mar 1963). "Shape and arrangement of columns in cat's striate cortex". J Physiol. 165 (3): 559–68. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.1963.sp007079. PMC 1359325. PMID 13955384.
to 100 cortical minicolumns per corticalcolumn a human would have 2–4 million (2×106–4×106) corticalcolumns. There may be more if the columns can overlap...
These are organised into horizontal cortical layers, and radially into corticalcolumns and minicolumns. Cortical areas have specific functions such as...
called corticalcolumns, patches of neocortex with a diameter of roughly 0.5 mm (and a depth of 2 mm, i.e., spanning all six layers). These columns are often...
A cortical minicolumn (also called cortical microcolumn) is a vertical column through the cortical layers of the brain. Neurons within the microcolumn...
of a corticalcolumn is a basic element in the framework. Hawkins places particular emphasis on the role of the interconnections from peer columns, and...
respond preferentially to input from one eye or the other. The columns span multiple cortical layers, and are laid out in a striped pattern across the surface...
individual neurons. Isolated cortical neurons fire regularly under certain conditions, but in the intact brain cortical cells are bombarded by highly...
cluster together as corticalcolumns. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel proposed the classic ice-cube organization model of corticalcolumns for two tuning properties:...
nodes attempt to model a portion of corticalcolumns (80 to 100 neurons) with approximately 20 HTM "cells" per column. HTMs model only layers 2 and 3 to...
forms a continuous smooth outer zone with a number of projections (corticalcolumns) that extend down between the pyramids. It contains the renal corpuscles...
2008-09-19. Retrieved 2008-08-11. Horton JC, Adams DL (April 2005). "The corticalcolumn: a structure without a function". Philosophical Transactions of the...
They allow the cortex to be better anchored. (Cortical extensions into the medullary space.) Each column consists of lines of blood vessels and urinary...
circuits, led to the idea that cortical evolution is governed by mechanisms regulating the addition of corticalcolumns, enabling additional functional...
of the project was to create a computer simulation of a mammalian corticalcolumn down to the molecular level. The project uses a supercomputer based...
waiting compartment for growing cortical afferents; its cells are involved in the establishment of pioneering cortical efferent projections and transient...
theories assume that the cortical architecture can be divided into hierarchically stacked levels, which correspond to different cortical regions. Every level...
phantom limbs were the result of cortical remapping. However, in 1995 Herta Flor and her colleagues demonstrated that cortical remapping occurs only in patients...
loss of input or gated activity allows the frequency of the thalamo-corticalcolumn to slow into the theta or delta band, and this defeats the lateral...
visual evoked potential generation in a mathematical model of coupled corticalcolumns". Biological Cybernetics. 73 (4): 357–366. doi:10.1007/s004220050191...
the primary visual cortex (V1) and span multiple cortical layers. The geometry of the orientation columns are arranged in slabs that are perpendicular to...
known as cortical and cancellous bone, each with a different appearance and characteristics. The hard outer layer of bones is composed of cortical bone,...
progenitor cell form a proliferative unit that creates one corticalcolumn; these columns contain a variety of neurons with different shapes. Induced...
Lausanne, aims to construct a biophysically detailed simulation of a corticalcolumn on the Blue Gene supercomputer. Modeling the richness of biophysical...
works. One of Hawkins' areas of interest is corticalcolumns. In 2016, he hypothesized that corticalcolumns did not capture just a sensation, but also...
the barrel field. The 'barrels' of the barrel field are regions within cortical layer IV that are visibly darker when stained to reveal the presence of...
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