Neocortex

The neocortex is a part of the cerebral cortex in mammals, involved with higher evolved functions. In humans, the neocortex possesses abilities such as sensory perception, reasoning, language and motor skills. According to lab article, Preferential electrical coupling regulates neocortical lineage-dependent microcircuit assembly, the evidence support the main hypothesis in that electrical coupling between sister excitatory neurons regulate the formation of specific synapses in a developing neocortex, and thus resulting in forming ontogenetic columns.
This article is important to the general educated audience because it presents basic rules in which guide neural connectivity in the neocortex. The sister neurons become electrically coupled, which is a spread of potential change from one cell to another, by current flow through gap junctions, the region of contact between two cells. This is done during the postnatal period of the cortex, which also revealed correlated spiking activity in brain slices. Afterwards, the cells showed high probabilities of developing connections through chemical synapses, the site at which neurons make functional contact. The …show more content…
The study was built on from an earlier study, which showed that related sister neurons have strong excitatory chemical connections with one another. This article in particular searches for the mechanisms that form the chemical connections. In the neocortex, neurons are strongly coupled through the gap junctions until the electrical synapses are replaced by the chemical synapses. The authors hypothesized that the electrical coupling of the sister neurons, in the gap junctions, might connect the neurons from the same radial glial cell and form an ontogenetic column that endures into