Neuroscience milestone – Vernon Mountcastle’s discovery of columnar organization of the neurocortex.

Brain neuron organization has been investigated since a long time and it had been very confusing for scientists trying to determine the organization among a mass of neurons. Vernon Mountcastle’s discovery of a column of neuron paved the way for understanding of the brain. In 1957 he made the radical discovery that the columnar pattern is repeated all over the cortex and proposing that unit as a basic formation. He also hypothesized that this columnar structure may be repeated within itself too and he has been proven right even though there may be some changes in height due to interconnections between the neurons. Ray Kurzweil in “How to create the mind” proposed that this basic column may be a pattern recognizer that is responsible for memory and advanced thought and metaphors.

Watch the video of Vernon Mountcastle’s interview below. It was taken in 1997 and is about 55 minutes long.

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