Modular organization of directionally tuned cells in the motor cortex: is there a short-range order?

We investigated the presence of short-range order (<600 microm) in the directional properties of neurons in the motor cortex of the monkey. For that purpose, we developed a quantitative method for the detection of functional cortical modules and used it to examine such potential modules formed by directionally tuned cells. In the functional domain, we labeled each cell by its preferred direction (PD) vector in 3D movement space; in the spatial domain, we used the position of the tip of the recording microelectrode as the cell's coordinate. The images produced by this method represented two orthogonal dimensions in the cortex; one was parallel ("horizontal") and the other perpendicular ("vertical") to the cortical layers. The distribution of directionally tuned cells in these dimensions was nonuniform and highly structured. Specifically, cells with similar PDs tended to segregate into vertically oriented minicolumns 50-100 microm wide and at least 500 microm high. Such minicolumns aggregated across the horizontal dimension in a secondary structure of higher order. In this structure, minicolumns with similar PDs were approximately 200 microm apart and were interleaved with minicolumns representing nearly orthogonal PDs; in addition, nonoverlapping columns representing nearly opposite PDs were approximately 350 microm apart.