Abstract
This review article addresses the function of the layers of the cerebral cortex. We develop the perspective that cortical layering needs to be understood in terms of its functional anatomy, i.e., the terminations of synaptic inputs on distinct cellular compartments and their effect on cortical activity. The cortex is a hierarchical structure in which feed forward and feedback pathways have a layer-specific termination pattern. We take the view that the influence of synaptic inputs arriving at different cortical layers can only be understood in terms of their complex interaction with cellular biophysics and the subsequent computation that occurs at the cellular level. We use high-resolution fMRI, which can resolve activity across layers, as a case study for implementing this approach by describing how cognitive events arising from the laminar distribution of inputs can be interpreted by taking into account the properties of neurons that span different layers. This perspective is based on recent advances in measuring subcellular activity in distinct feed-forward and feedback axons and in dendrites as they span across layers.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Stewart Shipp, University College London, United Kingdom Andreas H
We develop the perspective that cortical layering needs to be understood in terms of its functional anatomy, i.e., the terminations of synaptic inputs on distinct cellular compartments and their effect on cortical activity
We take the view that the influence of synaptic inputs arriving at different cortical layers can only be understood in terms of their complex interaction with cellular biophysics and the subsequent computation that occurs at the cellular level
Summary
Neuroscience has seen a dramatic evolution since the early anatomical investigations of the 19th and 20th centuries. With the discovery of different ways to stain brain tissue, the original emphasis was on cataloging the components of the brain (Figure 1A, ‘‘Components’’). This approach was enormously successful in describing the structure of the cerebral cortex as a laminar structure based on the cytoarchitecture. With the development of techniques for recording activity directly from the neurons of the brain, the original focus on a faithful anatomical description gave way to more simplified descriptions of the functional anatomy, i.e., organization and connectivity of structures (Hubel and Wiesel, 1962; Mountcastle, 1978). We take the view that a full description of a laminar structure like the cortex will require the successful marriage of both the components and the connectivity that captures an adequate description of both aspects and their interplay
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