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Neuroscience

Signals far and away

Nature volume 464, pages 1134–1136 (2010)Cite this article

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The neocortex of the mammalian brain mediates functions such as sensory perception and ultimately consciousness and language. The spread of local signals across large distances in this brain region has now been clarified.

On page 1155 of this issue, Adesnik and Scanziani1 report how selective stimulation of neurons in a specific area of the mouse neocortex affects the spatial distribution of excitatory and inhibitory signals both locally and farther afield within the cortex. This study is of value not just for its technical achievement — selective analysis of a single neuronal population in the brain of a live animal — but also because it provides information about the way in which neuronal signals spread within the less widely explored horizontal plane of the cortex.

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Figure 1: Layers and domains.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Dirk Feldmeyer is at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, INM-2, Research Centre Jülich, RWTH Aachen University, D-52074 Aachen, Germany.,

    Dirk Feldmeyer

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  1. Dirk Feldmeyer
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Feldmeyer, D. Signals far and away. Nature 464, 1134–1136 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/4641134a

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