Claustrum Structure page announcement
Claustrum Structure page announcement
I'm making this blog post to let you know that I just added a page Claustrum Structure. Please click on the link to check it out. This is a work in progress. More pages to come in the upcoming days on this topic. For your convenience, a portion of that page is below.
The claustrum is a mysterious brain structure. The word claustrum means "hidden away." Indeed, the claustrum is a thin, irregular sheet of grey matter, one sheet in each hemisphere of the brain, concealed beneath the inner surface of the neocortex. Viewed face on, it has an irregular outline remarkably reminiscent of the 48 contiguous United States. The thickness varies from a fraction of a millimeter to several millimeters. The claustrum is not flat but curved in a curious way.
Unlike the outstretching axons of the pyramidal neurons, the claustrum is positioned at the confluence of a large number of simple cortical loops. This widespread and reciprocal connectivity with most cortical regions raises the obvious question: why is all this information brought together, since this requires most of the loops being much longer than if the claustrum lay more uniformly under the cortex?