Abstract
The concept of the cortical column refers to vertical cell bands with similar response properties, which were initially observed by Vernon Mountcastle’s mapping of single cell recordings in the cat somatic cortex. It has subsequently guided over 50 years of neuroscientific research, in which fundamental questions about the modularity of the cortex and basic principles of sensory information processing were empirically investigated. Nevertheless, the status of the column remains controversial today, as skeptical commentators proclaim that the vertical cell bands are a functionally insignificant by-product of ontogenetic development. This paper inquires how the column came to be viewed as an elementary unit of the cortex from Mountcastle’s discovery in 1955 until David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel’s reception of the Nobel Prize in 1981. I first argue that Mountcastle’s vertical electrode recordings served as criteria for applying the column concept to electrophysiological data. In contrast to previous authors, I claim that this move from electrophysiological data to the phenomenon of columnar responses was concept-laden, but not theory-laden. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Mountcastle’s criteria provided Hubel Wiesel with a conceptual outlook, i.e. it allowed them to anticipate columnar patterns in the cat and macaque visual cortex. I argue that in the late 1970s, this outlook only briefly took a form that one could call a ‘theory’ of the cerebral cortex, before new experimental techniques started to diversify column research. I end by showing how this account of early column research fits into a larger project that follows the conceptual development of the column into the present.
Highlights
The cortical column designates vertical structures that span all layers of the cerebral cortex, and in which neurons show similar responses to sensory stimuli
In order to empirically determine whether the hypothesis that ‘‘orientation-selectivity in rodents is organized into columns’’ is true or false, researchers need to accept Mountcastle’s and Hubel and Wiesel’s experimental techniques as providing evidence for the behavior of cortical neurons
Continuing the metaphorical diction of the paper’s title, one could say that the cortical column ‘‘lived’’ in the experimental microworld that Hubel and Wiesel set up to work with it, and that, within this microworld, it showed the behavior leading to the classical columnar outlook
Summary
The cortical column designates vertical structures that span all layers of the cerebral cortex, and in which neurons show similar responses to sensory stimuli. The original definition of the column goes back to Vernon Mountcastle’s mapping of single-cell recordings in the somatic sensory cortex of the cat (Mountcastle et al 1955) It has subsequently become a basic concept that has guided over 50 years of neuroscientific research (Shepherd 2010), in which fundamental questions about the modularity of the cortex and basic principles of sensory information processing were empirically investigated. The following paper attempts to answer the first of these questions as a step towards a larger project that follows the conceptual development of the column into the present It thereby combines the approach of historians of science to follow the historical trajectories of scientific entities (Rheinberger 1997; Daston 1999) with the aim of philosophers of neuroscience to ‘‘examine the issues raised by central concepts of neuroscience’’ Investigating the role of concepts in ongoing research can help philosophers and historians to detect finegrained changes of conceptual application that may be overlooked by an exclusive focus on general theories or textbook treatments of central neuroscientific concepts
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