Background
Mountcastle, Vernon Benjamin was born on July 15, 1918 in Shelbyville, Kentucky, United States. Son of Vernon Mountcastle and Anne-Francis Marguerite (Waugh) Mountcastle.
( This significant contribution to neuroscience consists ...)
This significant contribution to neuroscience consists of two papers, the first by Mountcastle an, the second by Edelman. Between them, they examine from different but complementary directions the relationships that connect the higher brain--memory, learning, perception, thinking--with what goes on at the most basic levels of neural activity, with particular stress on the role of local neuronal circuits.Edelman's major hypothesis is that "the conscious state results from phasic reentrant signaling occurring in parallel processes that involve associations between stored patterns and current sensory or internal input." This selective process occurs by the polling of degenerate primary repertoires of neuronal groups that are formed during embryogenesis and development. Edelman's theory extrapolates to the brain the selectionistic immunological theories for which he was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Mountcastle's paper reviews what is known about the actual structure of various parts of the neo cortex. He relates the large entities of the neocortex to their component modules--the local neuronal circuits--and shows how the complex interrelationships of such a distributed system can yield dynamic distributed functioning.There are strong conceptual parallels between Mountcastle's idea of cortical columns and their functional subunits and Edelman's concept of populations of neurons functioning as processors in a brain system based on selectional rather than instructional principles. These parallels are traced and put into perspective in Francis Schmitt's Introduction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262550075/?tag=2022091-20
( The hand is an organ of considerable capability. With ...)
The hand is an organ of considerable capability. With it we feel, point, and reach, we determine the texture and shape of objects we palpate, we emit and receive signs of approval, compassion, condolence, and encouragement, and, on a different register, rejection, threat, dislike, antagonism, and attack. Vernon Mountcastle has devoted his career to studying the neurophysiology of sensation--the extended sensory surface, consisting of skin and subcutaneous tissue--in the hand. In The Sensory Hand Mountcastle provides an astonishingly comprehensive account of the neural underpinnings of the rich and complex tactile experiences evoked by stimulation of the hand. Mountcastle focuses attention on the nerve pathways linking the hand to central neural structures, structures that play a role in several other aspects of somatic sensation. His new book thus becomes a sequel to his earlier volume, Perceptual Neuroscience, in which he offered a detailed analysis of the role of the distributed systems of the neocortex in perception generally. Written by one of the giants of modern neuroscience and the first single-authored book-length treatment of the subject, The Sensory Hand is a major work of scholarship that will be essential reading for anyone interested in how the brain registers sensation and perception.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674019741/?tag=2022091-20
university professor neuroscientist
Mountcastle, Vernon Benjamin was born on July 15, 1918 in Shelbyville, Kentucky, United States. Son of Vernon Mountcastle and Anne-Francis Marguerite (Waugh) Mountcastle.
Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, 1938. Doctor of Science (honorary), Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, 1968. Doctor of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 1942.
Doctor of Science (honorary), University Pennsylvania, 1976. Doctor of Science (honorary), Northwestern University, 1985. Doctor of Science (honorary), University Minnesota, 1995.
Doctor of Medicine (honorary), University Zurich, 1983. Doctor of Medicine (honorary), University Siena, 1984. Doctor of Medicine (honorary), University Santiago, Spain, 1990.
He discovered and characterized the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in the 1950s. This discovery was a turning point in investigations of the cerebral cortex, as nearly all cortical studies of sensory function after Mountcastle"s 1957 paper, on the somatosensory cortex, used columnar organization as their basis. Mountcastle"s interest in cognition, specifically perception, led him to guide his laboratory to studies that linked perception and neural responses in the 1960s.
Although there were several notable works from his laboratory, the highest profile early paper appeared in 1968, a study explaining the neural basis of Flutter and vibration by the action of peripheral mechanoreceptors.
In 1978 Mountcastle proposed that all parts of the neocortex operate through a common principle, with the cortical column being the unit of computation. Mountcastle"s devotion to studies of single unit neural coding evolved through his leadership in the Bard Laboratories of Neurophysiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which for many years, was the only institute in the world devoted to this sub-field
Its work is continued today in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute. Mountcastle died in Baltimore at the age of 96 in January 2015.
Mountcastle was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1966.
( This significant contribution to neuroscience consists ...)
( The hand is an organ of considerable capability. With ...)
Member of American Association for the Advancement of Science (McGovern prize and medal 1990), National Academy of Sciences (chairman section on physiology 1971-1974, award in neuroscience 1998), Academy of Sciences (Finland, foreign), Royal Society London (foreign), Academy of Sciences (France, foreign), National Institute Medicine, American Philosophical Society (councillor 1979-1982), Society Neurosci. (president 1970-1972, Gerard prize 1980), Harvey Cushing Society, American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Physiological Society, Physiological Society London (honorary), American Neurological Association (honorary Bennett lecturer 1978), Sigma Xi, Phi Chi, Alpha Omega Alpha, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Nancy Clayton Pierpont, September 6, 1945. Children: Vernon Benjamin III, Anne Clayton, George Earle Pierpont.