Vernon Mountcastle

Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle (born July 15, 1918 in Shelbyville , Kentucky , † January 11, 2015 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was an American neuroscientist .

Mountcastle succeeded Philip Bard as director of the Department of Physiology at the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University from 1964 to 1980 . Here he founded the Philip Bard Laboratories of Neurophysiology, which became part of the Department of Neuroscience. From 1970 to 1971 he was President of the Society for Neuroscience .

In a work from 1957 on the organization of the somatosensory areas of the brain in cats, he demonstrated the structure of the cortex in this area in columnar nerve cells that are about 500 micrometers in size. Nerve cells within this area have a common field of reception.

In 1965 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1966 to the National Academy of Sciences , 1976 to the American Philosophical Society and 1989 to the Académie des Sciences . In 1978 he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize , 1980 the Ralph W. Gerard Prize , 1983 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research , 1986 the United States National Medal of Science and 1998 the NAS Award in the Neurosciences .

Vernon Mountcastle died on January 11, 2015 at his home in Baltimore, Maryland, aged 96 of complications from the flu .

Fonts

V. Mountcastle: An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function: The Unit Model and the Distributed System. In: Gerald M. Edelman , Vernon B. Mountcastle (Eds.): Mindful Brain: Cortical Organization and the Group-Selective Theory of Higher Brain Function. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1978, ISBN 0-262-05020-X .

literature

Kevan Martin: Vernon B. Mountcastle (1918-2015). In: Nature . Volume 518, No. 7539, 2015, p. 304, doi: 10.1038 / 518304a

Individual evidence

↑ Mountcastle: Modality and topographic properties of single neurons of cat's somatic sensory cortex. In: J. Neurophysiol. Volume 20, 1957, pp. 408-434.
^ Benedict Carey: Vernon B. Mountcastle, Brain Explorer, Dies at 96. In: The New York Times . January 17, 2015 (accessed January 17, 2015).

personal data
SURNAME	Mountcastle, Vernon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Mountcastle, Vernon Benjamin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 15, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH	Shelbyville , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH	January 11, 2015
Place of death	Baltimore , Maryland

[1] Mountcastle: Modality and topographic properties of single neurons of cat's somatic sensory cortex. In: J. Neurophysiol. Volume 20, 1957, pp. 408-434.

[2] Benedict Carey: Vernon B. Mountcastle, Brain Explorer, Dies at 96. In: The New York Times . January 17, 2015 (accessed January 17, 2015).