Shedding Light on Local Organizational Principles in the Primary Sensory Cortex

Humans see the world in rich color and detail. Rodents supplement their vision with long whiskers that provide tactile information about their environment. Neuroscientists can investigate how these senses are represented in the brain by identifying general organizational principles of the underlying neural circuits; different parts of the body surface have been mapped to specific brain areas. However, the resolution of this topographical brain map is coarse. It is analogous to a world map that shows the highways connecting major cities, but without details about local streets in each region. Tapping into the finer details of local information flow is a daunting task, because each cubic centimeter of the brain contains millions of neurons connected by billions of synapses.