Abstract
The vertical organization of the cortex was first described by several neuroanatomists who used the principle in order to parcellate the brain into different regions. Mountcastle validated the concept of the minicolumn as a functional unit of information processing. His discovery, set against strong opposition from the neuroscience community, became a paradigm shift to future studies on sensory function of the cerebral cortex, which have all been based on his columnar model. In effect, over the years, the concept of the minicolumn has become a way of integrating disparate elements of neuroanatomy and physiology into an element of computation that permeates all of the neocortex. More recently the study of the minicolumn in both health and disease has promoted new concepts in regards to cognition and the neuropathology of psychiatric conditions.
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Casanova, M.F. (2015). Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle. In: Casanova, M., Opris, I. (eds) Recent Advances on the Modular Organization of the Cortex. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9900-3_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9900-3_2
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