Primary somatosensory cortexIn neuroanatomy, the primary somatosensory cortex is located in the postcentral gyrus of the brain's parietal lobe, and is part of the somatosensory system. It was initially defined from surface stimulation studies of Wilder Penfield, and parallel surface potential studies of Bard, Woolsey, and Marshall. Although initially defined to be roughly the same as Brodmann areas 3, 1 and 2, more recent work by Kaas has suggested that for homogeny with other sensory fields only area 3 should be referred to as "primary somatosensory cortex", as it receives the bulk of the thalamocortical projections from the sensory input fields.
Mauthner cellThe Mauthner cells are a pair of big and easily identifiable neurons (one for each half of the body) located in the rhombomere 4 of the hindbrain in fish and amphibians that are responsible for a very fast escape reflex (in the majority of animals – a so-called C-start response). The cells are also notable for their unusual use of both chemical and electrical synapses. Mauthner cells first appear in lampreys (being absent in hagfish and lancelets), and are present in virtually all teleost fish, as well as in amphibians (including postmetamorphic frogs and toads).
Neural grooveThe neural groove is a shallow median groove of the neural plate between the neural folds of an embryo. The neural plate is a thick sheet of ectoderm surrounded on either side by the neural folds, two longitudinal ridges in front of the primitive streak of the developing embryo. The groove gradually deepens as the neural folds become elevated, and ultimately the folds meet and coalesce in the middle line and convert the groove into a closed tube, the neural tube or canal, the ectodermal wall of which forms the rudiment of the nervous system.
Action selectionAction selection is a way of characterizing the most basic problem of intelligent systems: what to do next. In artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science, "the action selection problem" is typically associated with intelligent agents and animats—artificial systems that exhibit complex behaviour in an agent environment. The term is also sometimes used in ethology or animal behavior. One problem for understanding action selection is determining the level of abstraction used for specifying an "act".
Basal plate (neural tube)In the developing nervous system, the basal plate is the region of the neural tube ventral to the sulcus limitans. It extends from the rostral mesencephalon to the end of the spinal cord and contains primarily motor neurons, whereas neurons found in the alar plate are primarily associated with sensory functions. The cell types of the basal plate include lower motor neurons and four types of interneuron. Initially, the left and right sides of the basal plate are continuous, but during neurulation they become separated by the floor plate, and this process is directed by the notochord.
ChordinChordin (from Greek χορδή, string, catgut) is a protein with a prominent role in dorsal–ventral patterning during early embryonic development. In humans it is encoded for by the CHRD gene. Chordin was originally identified in the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) in the laboratory of Edward M. De Robertis as a key developmental protein that dorsalizes early vertebrate embryonic tissues. It was first hypothesized that chordin plays a role in the dorsal homeobox genes in Spemann's organizer.
NeuropilNeuropil (or "neuropile") is any area in the nervous system composed of mostly unmyelinated axons, dendrites and glial cell processes that forms a synaptically dense region containing a relatively low number of cell bodies. The most prevalent anatomical region of neuropil is the brain which, although not completely composed of neuropil, does have the largest and highest synaptically concentrated areas of neuropil in the body. For example, the neocortex and olfactory bulb both contain neuropil.
Biological neuron modelBiological neuron models, also known as a spiking neuron models, are mathematical descriptions of the properties of certain cells in the nervous system that generate sharp electrical potentials across their cell membrane, roughly one millisecond in duration, called action potentials or spikes (Fig. 2). Since spikes are transmitted along the axon and synapses from the sending neuron to many other neurons, spiking neurons are considered to be a major information processing unit of the nervous system.
NeuroectodermNeuroectoderm (or neural ectoderm or neural tube epithelium) consists of cells derived from ectoderm. Formation of the neuroectoderm is first step in the development of the nervous system. The neuroectoderm receives bone morphogenetic protein-inhibiting signals from proteins such as noggin, which leads to the development of the nervous system from this tissue. Histologically, these cells are classified as pseudostratified columnar cells.
