The cerebral cortex, occupying over 70 percent of our brain mass, is key to any understanding of the workings--and disorders--of the human brain. offering a comprehensive account of the role of the cerebral cortex in perception, this monumental work by one of the world's greatest living neuroscientists does nothing short of creating a new subdiscipline in the field: perceptual neuroscience.

For this undertaking, Vernon Mountcastle has gathered information from a vast number of sources reaching back through two centuries of investigation into the intrinsic operations of the cortex. His survey includes phylogenetic, comparative, and neuroanatomical studies of the neocortex; studies of the large-scale organization of the neocortex, of neuronal histogenesis and the specification of cortical areas, of synaptic transmission between neurons in cortical microcircuits, and of rhythmicity and synchronization in neocortical networks; and inquiries into the binding problem--how activities among the separate processing nodes of distributed systems coalesce in a coherent activity that we call perception.

The first book to summarize what is known about the physiology of the cortex in perception, Perceptual Neuroscience will be a landmark in the literature of neuroscience.

Vernon B. Mountcastle, M.D. is University Professor of Neuroscience, Emeritus, at the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and winner of the 1998 National Academy of Sciences Award in Neurosciences, in recognition of his "extraordinary contributions to progress in the fields of neuroscience."

Read More by Vernon B. Mountcastle:

• The Sensory Hand: Neural Mechanisms of Somatic Sensation