Credit: Christine Constantinople, PhD/Randy Bruno, PhD/Columbia University Medical Center
Old and new views of the cortex. (A) Since the 1950s, the cortex has been thought to be a collection of modules, or "columns," the layers of which sequentially process information before handing it off to another column. (B) This study shows that sensory signals are instead copied to two targets (L4 and L5B) and that the upper and lower halves of the cortex are independent. The "top brain" and "bottom brain," which contain different types of cells, are able to influence behavior via completely different neural pathways.