Mountcastle V B
Philip Bard Laboratories, Department of Neuroscience, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Brain. 1997 Apr;120 ( Pt 4):701-22. doi: 10.1093/brain/120.4.701.
The modular organization of nervous systems is a widely documented principle of design for both vertebrate and invertebrate brains of which the columnar organization of the neocortex is an example. The classical cytoarchitectural areas of the neocortex are composed of smaller units, local neural circuits repeated iteratively within each area. Modules may vary in cell type and number, in internal and external connectivity, and in mode of neuronal processing between different large entities; within any single large entity they have a basic similarity of internal design and operation. Modules are most commonly grouped into entities by sets of dominating external connections. This unifying factor is most obvious for the heterotypical sensory and motor areas of the neocortex. Columnar defining factors in homotypical areas are generated, in part, within the cortex itself. The set of all modules composing such an entity may be fractionated into different modular subsets by different extrinsic connections. Linkages between them and subsets in other large entities form distributed systems. The neighborhood relations between connected subsets of modules in different entities result in nested distributed systems that serve distributed functions. A cortical area defined in classical cytoarchitectural terms may belong to more than one and sometimes to several distributed systems. Columns in cytoarchitectural areas located at some distance from one another, but with some common properties, may be linked by long-range, intracortical connections.
神经系统的模块化组织是脊椎动物和无脊椎动物大脑广泛记载的设计原则，新皮层的柱状组织就是一个例子。新皮层的经典细胞结构区域由较小的单元组成，即每个区域内反复迭代的局部神经回路。模块在细胞类型和数量、内部和外部连接以及不同大实体之间的神经元处理模式上可能有所不同；在任何单个大实体中，它们在内部设计和操作上具有基本相似性。模块最常通过一组主导的外部连接被分组为实体。这种统一因素在新皮层的异型感觉和运动区域最为明显。同型区域的柱状定义因素部分在皮层本身内部产生。构成这样一个实体的所有模块集可能会被不同的外在连接分割成不同的模块化子集。它们与其他大实体中的子集之间的联系形成分布式系统。不同实体中相连模块子集之间的邻域关系导致了服务于分布式功能的嵌套分布式系统。以经典细胞结构术语定义的皮层区域可能属于不止一个，有时属于几个分布式系统。位于彼此有一定距离但有一些共同特性的细胞结构区域中的柱，可能通过长距离的皮层内连接相连。
