Abstract
The history of neuroscience, like that of all of biology, has been a process of relating structure and function. Three major periods in neuroscience can be characterized by attempts to pitch this relationship at various levels in the nervous system. In the mid-nineteenth century, a series of neurological observations showed that particular functions — notably, the ability to understand and generate speech — appear to be localized to specific regions of the cerebral cortex. Around the turn of the century, the discrete nature of neurons as cells was recognized, and initial discoveries were made about the synaptic connections between them. Finally, in the last quarter-century has come the discovery of the cortical column: a modular structure repeated throughout much of the cortex that is thought to serve as an input/output unit, and in which all cells share at least some functional properties, (e.g., receptive fields).
This work was supported by a grant from the International Business Machines Corporation.
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Finkel, L.H. (1988). Neuronal Group Selection: A Basis for Categorization by the Nervous System. In: de Kerckhove, D., Lumsden, C.J. (eds) The Alphabet and the Brain. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01093-8_4
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