Five points on columns
Name
Rockland-2010-Five points on columns.pdf
Size
1.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d567c78304109c17c8a448604a57efab
Author(s)
Rockland, Kathleen
Date Issued
June 2010
Journal
Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Citation
Rockland, Kathleen S. “Five Points on Columns.” Frontiers in Neuroanatomy (2010)
Front. Neuroanat. 4:22 Copyright: © 2010 K. S. Rockland
Version
Final published version
Abstract
“Column,” like “gene,” has both conceptual and linguistic shortcomings. The simple question “what is a column” is not easy to answer and the word itself is not easy to replace. In the present article, I have selected five points, in no way comprehensive or canonical, but which may nevertheless serve as a prompt and aid for further discussions and re-evaluation. These are: that anatomical columns are not solid structures, that they are part of locally interdigitating systems, that any delimited column also participates in a widely distributed network, that columns are not an obligatory cortical feature, and that columns (as “modules”) occur widely in the brain in non-cortical structures. I focus on the larger scale macrocolumns, mainly from an anatomical perspective. My position is that cortical organization is inherently dynamic and likely to incorporate multiple processing styles. One can speculate that the distributed mappings within areas like piriform cortex may resemble at least one mode of neocortical processing strategy.
MIT Department
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2010.00022
