Cortical patterning is a field of

developmental neuroscience The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The fiel ...

which aims to determine how the various functional areas of the

cerebral cortex The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. The cerebral cortex mostly consists of the six-layered neocortex, with just 10% consistin ...

are generated, what size and shape they will be, and how their spatial pattern across the surface of the cortex is specified. Early brain

lesion A lesion is any damage or abnormal change in the tissue of an organism, usually caused by disease or trauma. ''Lesion'' is derived from the Latin "injury". Lesions may occur in plants as well as animals. Types There is no designated classif ...

studies indicated that different parts of the cortex served different cognitive functions, such as visual, somatosensory, and motor functions, beautifully assimilated by Brodmann in 1909. Today the field supports the idea of a ' protomap', which is a molecular pre-pattern of the cortical areas during early embryonic stages. The protomap is a feature of the cortical

ventricular zone In vertebrates, the ventricular zone (VZ) is a transient embryonic layer of tissue containing neural stem cells, principally radial glial cells, of the central nervous system (CNS). The VZ is so named because it lines the ventricular system, whi ...

, which contains the primary stem cells of the cortex known as

radial glial cell Radial glial cells, or radial glial progenitor cells (RGPs), are bipolar-shaped progenitor cells that are responsible for producing all of the neurons in the cerebral cortex. RGPs also produce certain lineages of glia, including astrocytes and ...

s. A system of signaling centers, positioned strategically at the midline and edges of the cortex, produce secreted signaling proteins that establish concentration gradients in the cortical primordium. This provides positional information for each stem cell, and regulates proliferation, neurogenesis, and areal identity. After the initial establishment of areal identity, axons from the developing

thalamus The thalamus (from Greek θάλαμος, "chamber") is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon (a division of the forebrain). Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, ...

arrive at their correct cortical areal destination through the process of axon guidance and begin to form synapses. Many activity-dependent processes are then thought to play important roles in the maturation of each area.

References

{{Reflist Developmental neuroscience Stem cells Cerebral cortex

See also

References