1 NOTES ON CORTICAL AREAS IN MAMMALS

The past two centuries of work on the structure and function of the cerebral cortex have been characterized by recurring debates—often too often forgotten and re-argued—involving several basic oppositions. Two of these are: (1) "field" versus "localization " theories of cortical function, and (2) higher-level, abstract (linguistic) facilities versus lower-level, less abstract, sensorimotor functions. In the following sections, we first briefly consider the history of ideas about cortical areas rehearsing debates about those two issues. Second, we present the current picture of our understanding of visual areas in primates (which occupy over half of the entire primate neocortex). In the third section, we consider the evidence for auditory, somatosensory, motor, and frontal limbic areas which take up most of the remaining half of the cortex. In the fourth section, we introduce the very old idea of a "common sensorium " as a preface to recent evidence against the idea of a centrally located polymodal association cortex. Finally, we turn to recent attempts to identify monkey cortical areas in humans, and draw out the implication of these results with respect to the long-standing debates identifed above