Brain science at the century's Ebb

Daedalus

Volumn 127, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 1-36

  Mountcastle, Vernon B ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 13044317587     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Mario Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach (New York and Oxford: Pergamon, 1980).
2. See also Mario Bunge and Rubén Ardilla, Philosophy of Psychology (New York and Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1987).
3. See the reviews by Ilya Farber and Patricia S. Churchland, William Hirst, Marcel Kinsbourne, Edoardo Bisiach and Anna Berti, Morris Moscovitch, Robert Knight and Marcia Grabowecky, J. Allan Hobson and Robert Stickgold, and Michael Gazzaniga, all in Gazzaniga, ed., Cognitive Neurosciences (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), Section IX: Consciousness.
4. Colin McGinn, "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?" Mind 98 (1989): 349-366.
5. Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 21.
6. Alan L. Hodgkin, The Conduction of the Nerve Impulse (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964).
7. See also the papers by Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley in Journal of Physiology 116 (1952): 449, 473, and 497;
8. Journal of Physiology 117 (1952): 500;
9. and Journal of Physiology 121 (1953): 403.
10. Kenneth Stewart Cole, Membranes, Ions, and Impulses (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972).
11. One recent study, which used imaging methods, puts the average human cranial volume at about 1,434 ml for males and about 1,325 ml for females. See P. A. Filapek et al., "The Young Adult Human Brain: An MRI-Based Morphometric Analysis," Cerebral Cortex 4 (1994): 344-361.
12. For estimates of the number of neurons in the human neocortex, see J. Braegaard et al., "The Total Number of Neurons in the Human Cortex Unbiasedly Estimated Using Optical Dissectors," Journal of Microscopy 151 (1990): 285-304;
13. and H. J. G. Gunderson, "Stereology of Arbitrary Particles: A Review of Unbiased Number and Size Estimates and Presentation of Some New Cases (in Memory of William R. Thompson)," Journal of Microscopy 143 (1986): 3-45.
14. The neuron theory evolved from the discoveries of the Spanish neurohistologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal. For translations and interpretive comments on Cajal's work, see Javier DeFilipe and Edward G. Jones, Cajal on the Cerebral Cortex: An Annotated Translation of the Complete Writings (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
15. Claude Bernard discovered a century and a half ago that after muscular paralysis produced by the alkaloid curare, a muscle still contracts in response to directly applied electrical stimuli, and that conduction in the nerve axons is unimpaired. He concluded that curare acts on some special chemical entity believed to operate at the neuromuscular junction - a correct conjecture. Bernard's original work was published in C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 43 (1856): 825-829.
16. The history of the discovery of the chemical nature of synaptic transmission begins with the hypothesis of Elliott derived from his studies of the action of adrenaline upon denervated muscle in 1904 and continues through the discoveries of the actions of acetylcholine and adrenaline at peripheral autonomic and neuromuscular synapses by Otto Loewi, Henry Dale, and their colleagues in the period 1914-1936. See the Nobel lectures by Dale and Loewi of 1936 in Nobelstiftelsen [Nobel lectures], Physiology or Medicine (4 vols.) (Amsterdam, London, and New York: Elsevier, 1964-),
17. vol. Physiology or Medicine ( 2 (1922-1941). The later discovery of chemical transmission in the brain led to the development of related sciences, particularly of neuropharmacology. It is a reasonable guess that presently there are more neuroscientists working in these fields than in any other of the brain sciences, and perhaps more than all the rest together. As witness, Medline lists 363,890 papers published between 1966 and July of 1997 on the general subject of synaptic transmission. Of these, 121,102 are listed for the four most prevalent small molecule transmitters in the brain; for dopamine, 44,760; for acetylcholine, 31,077; for gamma-aminobutyric acid, 16,902; for norepinephrine, 28,163.
18. These remarkable advances come from the discoveries made by Bernard Katz and his collaborators of the sequence of events in chemical transmission at the neuromuscular junction. See Katz, The Release of Neural Transmitter Substances (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964).
19. Studies of synaptic transmission in the spinal cord made by Eccles and his colleagues are described in a series of papers published in the 1950s; see, for example, J. S. Coombs, John C. Eccles, and P. Fatt, "The Specific Ionic Conductances and the Ionic Movements Across the Motoneuron Membrane that Produce the Inhibitory Post-synaptic Potential," Journal of Physiology 130 (1955): 326-373;
20. and Coombs, Eccles, and Fatt, "Excitatory Synaptic Actions in Motoneurons," Journal of Physiology 130 (1955): 374-395.
21. 2+ spike during an action potential (exocytosis requires less than 0.3 msec); endocytosis, in which empty SVs are rapidly internalized, and become coated; translocation, in which coated SVs lose their coats, and are recycled; endosome fusion, in which recycled SVs are fused with endosomes; budding, by which SVs are regenerated by budding from endosomes; transmitter uptake, in which SVs are re-loaded with the transmitter molecule; and finally translocation, by which SVs move back to the active zone, perhaps by a cytoskeleton-based transport process.
22. Jon H. Kass and S. L. Florence, "Mechanisms of Reorganization in Sensory Systems of Primates after Peripheral Nerve Injury," Advances in Neurology 73 (1997): 147-158;
23. Florence and Kass, "Large-Scale Reorganization at Multiple Levels of the Somatosensory Pathway Follows Therapeutic Amputation of the Hand in Monkeys," Journal of Neuroscience 15 (1995): 8083-8095;
24. Michael M. Merzenich and W. M. Jenkins, "Reorganization of Cortical Representations of the Hand Following Alterations of Skin Inputs Induced by Nerve Injury, Skin Island Transfers, and Experience," Journal of Hand Therapy 6 (1993): 89-204;
25. Michael M. Merzenich et al., "Progression of Change Following Median Nerve Section in the Cortical Representation of the Hand in Areas 3b and 1 in Owl and Squirrel Monkeys," Journal of Neuroscience 10 (1983): 639-665.
26. Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (New York: Basic Books, 1987);
27. Edelman, The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
28. For a briefer and more recent version, see Edelman, "Neural Darwinism: Selection and Reentrant Signalling in Higher Brain Function," Neuron 10 (1993): 115-125.
29. Daniel J. Povenelli and Todd M. Preuss, "Theory of Mind: Evolutionary History of a Cognitive Specialization," Trends in Neuroscience 18 (1995): 418-424;
30. Preuss, "Argument from Animals to Humans in Cognitive Neuroscience," in Gazzaniga, ed., The Cognitive Neurosciences, 1227-1241.
31. Preuss, "Argument from Animals to Humans in Cognitive Neuroscience," in The Cognitive Neurosciences, 1227-1241. Ibid.
32. The discovery of cytoarchitecture is usually attributed to Theodor Meynert (1867), although earlier discoveries like that of the white line in the occipital cortex by Genari in 1776 hinted at what was coming. The history of the field after Meynert is studded with the names of giants in neuroanatomy: Berlin, Lewis, Campbell, Eliot Smith, Kolicker, Carl Hammarberg, Cecile and Otto Vogt, Korbinian Brodmann, and Constantin Freiherr von Economo. The list includes many distinguished living neuroanatomists.
33. The original discovery of axoplasmic flow was made by Paul Weiss. See Weiss and H. P. Hiscoe, "Experiments on the Mechanism of Nerve Growth," Journal of Experimental Zoology 107 (1948): 315-327.
34. Malcolm Young, Jack Scannell, and Gully Burns, The Analysis of Cortical Connectivity (Austin, Tex.: R. G. Landes & Co.; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1995);
35. Karl Friston et al., "Functional Tomography: Multidimensional Scaling and Functional Connectivity in the Brain," Cerebral Cortex 6 (1996): 156-164;
36. Daniel J. Fellerman and David C. Van Essen, "Distributed Hierarchical Processing in the Primate Cerebral Cortex," Cerebral Cortex 1(1991): 1-47.
37. Wolf Singer and Charles M. Gray, "Visual Feature Integration and the Temporal Correlation Hypothesis," Annual Review of Neuroscience 18 (1995): 555-586.
38. Vernon Mountcastle, "The Parietal System and Some Higher Brain Functions," Cerebral Cortex 5 (1995): 377-390.
39. Rodney Douglas and Kevan A. C. Martin, "A Functional Microcircuit for Cat Visual Cortex," Journal of Physiology 440 (1991): 735-769;
40. Charles D. Gilbert, "Circuitry, Architecture, and Functional Dynamics of Visual Cortex," Cerebral Cortex 3 (1993): 373-386;
41. Alex Thomson and Jim Deuchars, "Temporal and Spatial Properties of Local Circuits in Neocortex," Trends in Neuroscience 17 (1994): 119-126;
42. Erol Basar and Theodore H. Bullock, eds., Induced Rhythms in the Brain (Boston: Birkhauser, 1992);
43. J. E. Desmedt and C. Tomberg, "Transient Phaselocking of 40 Hz Electrical Oscillations in Prefrontal and Parietal Human Cortex Reflects the Process of Conscious Somatic Perception," Neuroscience Letters 168 (1994): 126-129.
44. There is an immense flow of monographs, textbooks, and journals in cognitive science. An excellent entry is via the three-volume set edited by Daniel N. Osherson and Howard Lasnik, An Invitation to Cognitive Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). The three volumes are titled Language, Visual Cognition, and Action and Thinking. The quotation is from the introductory essay in the first volume, at xvii.
45. Berger's studies began in 1902 in attempts to record from the brains of dogs. From 1924 on he succeeded in recording the electrical activity of the human brain, using string galvanometers without amplification. From 1931-1938, with amplification, he continued the intensive studies that established him as the pioneer of the human EEG. Pierre Gloor has collected Berger's fourteen papers; see Gloor, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 18 (1969): Supplement.
46. Paul L. Nunez, Neocortical Dynamics and Human EEG Rhythms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
47. Alan Gevins, "High-Resolution Electroencephalographic Studies of Cognition," in Advances in Neurology 66 (1995): 181-195.
48. An immense literature has accumulated on brain imaging. See especially the authoritative monograph by Richard Frackowiak et al., Human Brain Function (New York and London: Academic Press, 1997).
49. See also Per E. Roland, Brain Activation (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1993), and the 823 papers listed in Medline up to July of 1997. For more truncated descriptions,
50. see the special issue of Cerebral Cortex 6 (1) (1996);
51. D. L. Bihan and Avi Karni, "Applications of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Human Brain Science," Current Opinion in Neurobiology 5 (1995): 231-237;
52. Roberto Cabeza and Lars Nyberg, "Imaging Cognition," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9 (1997) (1): 1-27;
53. Verne Caviness, Jr., et al., "Advanced Application of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Human Brain Science," Brain and Development 17 (1995): 399-408;
54. M. S. Cohen and S. Y. Brookheimer, "Localization of Brain Function Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging," Trends in Neuroscience 17 (1994): 269-277;
55. Karl Friston, "Imaging Cognitive Anatomy," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1 (1997): 21-27;
56. Risto Naatanen, Risto J. Ilmoniemi, and Kimmo Alho, "Magnetoenceph-alography in Studies of Human Cognitive Brain Function," Trends in Neuroscience 17 (1994): 389-395.
57. For an entry into cognitive neuroscience, see the volume edited by Michael Gazzaniga, The Cognitive Neurosciences, and the first ten volumes of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
58. David Ingvar, "'Memory of the Future': An Essay on the Temporal Organization of Conscious Awareness," Human Neurobiology 4 (1985): 127-136;
59. and Ingvar, "The Will of the Brain: Cerebral Correlates of Willful Acts," Journal of Theoretical Biology 171 (1994): 7-12.
60. See also Christopher D. Frith et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B 244 (1991): 241-246.
61. A problem for the imaging methods is the conflict between the need for spatial resolving power and time resolution. Beyond these is the basic limitation of the vascular-on time constant, and the relation of the spatial and temporal relations of the changes in blood flow to the distributions of changes in neuronal activity. The possibility exists that significant changes in neuronal population signals may occur without significant changes in overall activity, and hence no change in blood flow, e.g., changes in phase relations without changes in overall levels of activity. Amiram Grinwald and his associates are now engaged in experiments aimed at this problem. They correlate activity dependent changes in oxyhemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin, and light scattering measured with imaging spectroscopy in the activated visual cortex with recordings of neurons in the local area with microelectrodes. Until now these have been made in anesthetized animals, in some cases through the intact dura and thinned skull. Experiments in unanesthetized monkeys are forthcoming. See Ron Frostig et al., "Cortical Functional Architecture and Local Coupling Between Neuronal Optical Imaging of Intensive Signals," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 87 (1990): 6082-6086;
62. Amos Arieli et al., "Coherent Spatiotemporal Patterns of Ongoing Activity Revealed by Real-Time Optical Imaging Coupled with Single-Unit Recording in Cat Visual Cortex," Journal of Neurophysiology 73 (1995): 2072-2093;
63. Dov Malonek and Amiram Grinwald, "Interactions Between Electrical Activity and Cortical Microcirculation," Science 272 (1996): 551-554.
64. Ole Isacson and Terrence Deacon, "Neural Transplantation Studies Reveal the Brain's Capacity for Continuous Reconstruction," Trends in Neuroscience 20 (1997): 477-482.
65. Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, "A Complexity Measure for Selective Matching of Signals by the Brain," Cerebral Cortex 2 (1992): 310-335;
66. Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns, and Gerald M. Edelman, ibid, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 93 (1996): 3422-3427.
67. See also E. D. Lumer, Gerald M. Edelman, and Giulio Tononi, "Neural Dynamics in a Model of the Thalamocortical System, I: Layers, Loops, and the Emergence of Fast Synchronous Rhythms," Cerebral Cortex 7 (1997): 207-227 and 228-236. Edelman has been the chief developer of the model of the brain as a selective system; see note 13.
68. See the authoritative and entertaining monograph by Patricia S. Churchland and Terrence J. Sejnowski, The Computational Brain (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
69. W. W. Lytton and Terrence J. Sejnowski, "Computational Neuroscience," in Arthur K. Asbury, Gary McKhann, and W. Ian McDonald, eds., Diseases of the Nervous System: Clinical Neurology, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1992).