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Columnar Organization of the Motor Cortex: Direction of Movement

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Recent Advances on the Modular Organization of the Cortex

Abstract

The discovery by Vernon B. Mountcastle of the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex (Mountcastle VB, J Neurophysiol 20:408–434, 1957, Brain 120:701–722, 1997) was the single most important discovery of the twentieth century in cortical physiology. Not only did it serve as the framework for the orderly arrangement of knowledge concerning cortical organization and function (Edelman and Mountcastle, The mindful brain. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978) but also as a framework for exploring and investigating new ideas and for revisiting old ones about the organization of particular cortical areas. Here I review the history of facts and ideas about the organization of the motor cortex and discuss the evidence that the direction of movement is the principle governing motor cortical columnar organization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I argued in favor of the resurgence of this idea, playing the Devil’s advocate, at a meeting of the Neuroscience Research Program in La Jolla, CA in 2013. Dr. Edelman was incredulous and hardly believed his ears. Nevertheless, in his usual grand style, humor and compassion, he counter argued, and we had a lot of intellectual fun.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the American Legion Brain Sciences Chair and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain Sciences Center, Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System; and Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota Medical School, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA

    Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

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  1. Apostolos P. Georgopoulos
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Correspondence to Apostolos P. Georgopoulos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

    Manuel F. Casanova

  2. Dept. of Physiology & Pharmacology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

    Ioan Opris

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Georgopoulos, A.P. (2015). Columnar Organization of the Motor Cortex: Direction of Movement. 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_8

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