Vernon B. Mountcastle (born July 15, 1918 in Shelbyville, Kentucky) is a retired neuroscientist from the Johns Hopkins University. 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 [1] on the somatosensory cortex used columnar organization as their basis. Indeed, David Hubel in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech said Mouncastle's "discovery of columns in the somatosensory cortex was surely the single most important contribution to the understanding of cerebral cortex since Cajal [[2]]. Mountcastle's interest in cognition, specifically perception, led him to guide his lab to studies that linked perception and neural responses in the 1960s. Although there were several works from his lab, the highest profile early paper was in 1968 [3], a study explaining the neural basis of flutter and vibration by the action of peripheral mechanoreceptors. Mountcastle's devotion to studies of single unit neural coding evolved through his leadership in the Bard Labs of Neurophysiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which was for many years the only institute in the world devoted to this sub-field, and its work is continued today in the Krieger Mind/Brain Institute. He is Professor Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University. is the 196th day of the year (197th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... Shelbyville is a city in Shelby County, Kentucky, United States. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... A cortical column is a group of neurons in the brain cortex which can be successively penetrated by a probe inserted perpendicularly to the cortical surface, and which have nearly identical receptive fields. ... Location of the cerebral cortex Slice of the cerebral cortex, ca. ... David Hunter Hubel (b. ... Look up Cognition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ... Flutter: In electronics, rapid variation of signal parameters, such as amplitude, phase, and frequency. ... Oscillation is the variation, typically in time, of some measure as seen, for example, in a swinging pendulum. ... A mechanoreceptor is a sensory receptor that responds to mechanical pressure or distortion. ... Neural coding is the study in in neuroscience of how sensory and other information is represented in the brain by neurons. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ... The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. ...

Professor Mountcastle was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1966.In 1978, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel both received Nobel Prize in 1981. In 1983 he was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. He is also a recipient of the United States National Medal of Science in 1986. President Harding and the National Academy of Sciences at the White House, Washington, DC, April 1921 The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers that have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemistry. ... Columbia University is a private research university in the United States and a member of the prestigious Ivy League. ... David Hunter Hubel (b. ... Torsten Nils Wiesel (b. ... The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: ) are awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine. ... The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is awarded by the Lasker Foundation for the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of disease. ... National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science, also called the Presidential Medal of Science, is an honor given by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social...

Vernon Mountcastle is a graduate of Roanoke College in Virginia.

Bibliography

• Vernon Mountcastle (1978), "An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function: The Unit Model and the Distributed System", The Mindful Brain (Gerald M. Edelman and Vernon B. Mountcastle, eds.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Year 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1978 Gregorian calendar). ...

External links

• Biography
• Brain Voyager