CURRENT TRENDS IN NEUROSCIENCES
THE STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THE HUMAN MIND
Yayıncı:
İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları
Understanding the organization of the human mind has been a long-standing endeavor of scientists. In this framework, the dual origin hypothesis proposes that the cerebral cortex of higher mammals originates from two primordial structures, the piriform cortex and the hippocampus. While the piriform cortex gives rise to olfactocentric division, a.k.a. the ventral trend, the hippocampus gives rise to hippocampocentric division, a.k.a. the dorsal trend. Cortical areas arising from the ventral trend include ventral parts of the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, the insula, and most of the temporal lobe. Those from the dorsal trend include the medial and dorsolateral parts of the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, the hippocampal formation, and the parahippocampal gyrus. These two trends overlap in the anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and temporo-parietal junction. All these spatially distributed brain regions cooperate with each other to form a set of networks, today called intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs). The correlative or anti-correlative interactions of ICNs give rise to human mental functions, which can be subdivided into two according to dual origin hypothesis as the general cognitive domains of the dorsal trend, the “cold brain” and the emotional and comportmental functions of the ventral trend, the “hot brain.” The default mode network as the seat of the “self” seems to be the major orchestrator of these dual streams of the cold and hot brain.
