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The neocortical circuit: themes and variations

Nature Neuroscience volume 18, pages 170–181 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Similarities in neocortical circuit organization across areas and species suggest a common strategy to process diverse types of information, including sensation from diverse modalities, motor control and higher cognitive processes. Cortical neurons belong to a small number of main classes. The properties of these classes, including their local and long-range connectivity, developmental history, gene expression, intrinsic physiology and in vivo activity patterns, are remarkably similar across areas. Each class contains subclasses; for a rapidly growing number of these, conserved patterns of input and output connections are also becoming evident. The ensemble of circuit connections constitutes a basic circuit pattern that appears to be repeated across neocortical areas, with area- and species-specific modifications. Such 'serially homologous' organization may adapt individual neocortical regions to the type of information each must process.

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Figure 1: Dendritic morphology of excitatory neurons in S1 barrel cortex.
Figure 2: Excitatory hodology of ECs in layers 2–5, including intratelencephalic neurons in layer 4 (L4 IT), IT neurons of other layers (L2/3, L5A, L5B; grouped as IT here) and pyramidal tract (PT) neurons.
Figure 3: Thalamocortical (TC) input streams.
Figure 4: Hypothesized excitatory hodology of the main EC classes.
Figure 5: Hypothesized homologous hodology of inter-areal connectivity.
Figure 6: Sequential hodology of three main inhibitory cell classes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Svoboda, N. Steinmetz, N. Yamawaki and M. Carandini for comments. K.D.H. is supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust (095668), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (I005102, K015141) and Simons Foundation. G.M.G.S. is supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NS061963, NS087479, DC013272, EB017695) and the Whitehall Foundation.

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  1. UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK

    Kenneth D Harris

  2. Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Gordon M G Shepherd

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Harris, K., Shepherd, G. The neocortical circuit: themes and variations. Nat Neurosci 18, 170–181 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3917

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