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The cerebral cortex Part I

The cerebral cortex is by far the most important area of the human brain, granting it the capability for advanced reasoning skills, personal identity, and essentially what makes us human. The cerebral cortex occupies the covering surface of the brain. Because the human brain is so powerful, it takes up a larger than average percentage of our brain then average. Having a large head could have made childbirth problematic, but luckily evolution is an ever-so foresightful force, so it decided to pack the cerebral cortex into fissures that are found all over the surface. If you were to unfold the cerebral cortex, it would be as pig as full pizza!

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Articles of Interest

Brain Mappers Create a Detailed Atlas of the Human Cortex

The maps could help future researchers probe the working brain.

Cerebral Cortex: What It Is, Function & Location

Although the cerebral cortex is only a few millimeters in thickness, it consists of approximately half the weight of the total brain mass. The cerebral cortex has a wrinkled appearance, consisting of bulges, also known as gyri, and deep furrows, known as sulci. The many folds and wrinkles of the cerebral cortex allow for a wider surface area for an increased number of neurons to live there, permitting large amounts of information to be processed.

Grey Matter vs White Matter in the Brain

Gray matter, named for its pinkish-gray color, is home to neural cell bodies, axon terminals, and dendrites, as well as all nerve synapses. This brain tissue is abundant in the cerebellum, cerebrum, and brain stem. It also forms a butterfly-shaped portion of the central spinal cord.

Solution Offered to Old Puzzle: How the Cortex Got Its Folds

The reason for the folds seems fairly clear. As animals like humans got smarter, nature had to find a way to fit a rapidly growing cortex (a thin sheet) into a confined space (the human skull.) The solution: crumple, fold, crinkle and generally smash the cortex into desired patterns. Thus each human brain is folded into distinct maps or territories. But how these folds arise during the brain's development has always been a puzzle. What produces these folds so that some areas are the same in all brains yet others are completely different? Is there a simple rule that can give rise to such patterns?

The Cerebral Cortex: A Very Tangled Web

One of the striking things about the cortex is that a brain region with such a stereotyped structural motif... also appears to be instrumental in such varied functions as seeing, hearing, understanding language, speaking, moving, planning, making moral and economic decisions, and more. It is easy to see why the cortex attracts such scientific attention, aside from its being relatively easy to access experimentally.

The Cerebral Cortex: The Programmable Organ

The programmability of the human cortex is both a blessing and a curse.

The Making of a Brain

Study reveals how a neural precursor protein shapes the future of neurons in the cerebral cortex.

Resources

KenHub

The cerebral cortex (cortex of the brain) is the outer grey matter layer that completely covers the surface of the two cerebral hemispheres. It is about 2 to 4 mm thick and contains an aggregation of nerve cell bodies. This layer is thrown into complex folds, with elevations called gyri and grooves known as sulci. The cerebral cortex is quite distinct from the cerebrum (forebrain) which describes the two cerebral hemispheres (right and left), the largest part of the brain.

Physiopedia

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It has up to six layers of nerve cells. It is covered by the meninges and often referred to as grey matter[1]. The cortex is grey because nerves in this area lack the insulation (myelin) that makes most other parts of the brain appear to be white.

StatPearls

The brain is one of the largest and most complex organs in our body; it is composed of billions of neurons that communicate together by forming numerous connections and synapses. The brain weight is different between men and women; The male brain weighs about 1336 grams, and the female comes in at about 1198 grams, but this difference in weight has shown no effect on function or intelligence.

TeachMe Anatomy

Grey matter forms the surface of each cerebral hemisphere (known as the cerebral cortex), and is associated with processing and cognition.