Barrel cortex

Barrel cortex
Identifiers
NeuroLex ID	Barrel cortex
Anatomical terms of neuroanatomy []

The barrel cortex refers to a region of somatosensory cortex that is identifiable in some species of rodents and species of at least two other orders and contains the barrel field. The 'barrels' of the barrel field are regions within cortical layer IV that are visibly darker when stained to reveal the presence of , and are separated from each other by lighter areas called septa. These dark-staining regions are a major target for somatosensory inputs from the thalamus, and each barrel corresponds to a region of the body. Due to this distinctive cellular structure, organisation, and functional significance, the barrel cortex is a useful tool to understand cortical processing and has played an important role in neuroscience. The majority of what is known about corticothalamic processing comes from studying the barrel cortex and researchers have intensively studied the barrel cortex as a model of neocortical column.

The most distinctive aspect of the barrel field are the whisker barrels. These structures were first discovered by Woolsey and Van der Loos. Staining in the whisker barrels is more distinct than that in other areas of somatosensory cortex. Recognizing that the array was similar to that of the vibrissae on the mystacial pad, they hypothesized that the barrels were the "cortical correlates of the mystacial vibrissae" and that "one barrel represents one vibrissa". Whereas small non-whisker areas of barrel cortex correspond to large and sometimes overlapping areas of the body, each much larger whisker barrel corresponds to a single whisker. As a result, the whisker barrels are the focus of the majority of barrel cortex research, and 'barrel cortex' is often used to refer primarily to the whisker barrels. Consequently, much of this article focuses on rodent whisker barrel cortex.

The barrel field, like many regions of cortex, is organised into a topographic map. In the case of the barrel field, the map is somatotopic - based on the arrangement of body parts. Areas corresponding to the nose and mouth are more rostral and lateral in the map, the forelimb, hindlimb and trunk are more medial, with the forelimb rostral of the hindlimb, and the whisker barrel subfields - the posteromedial barrel subfield, which corresponds to the major facial whiskers (the mystacial vibrissae), and the anteriolateral barrel subfield, which corresponds to the smaller whiskers of the face - are caudal and lateral. Although the whiskers make up a relatively small portion of the animal, they dominate the somatotopic map.

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