Regional Differences in Cortical Organization

Although there are elegants maps of the human brain that reveal differences in cellular architecture between different cortical regions, there is not much information about how corresponding cortical regions differ between the left and right hemispheres. As Gazzaniga explains in his Perspective, new results reveal the surprising finding of asymmetry in area 22 (which is important for language processing) of the left and right hemisphere (Galuske et al.). Clusters of neurons in area 22 of the left hemisphere are spaced farther apart and have longer axons cabling them together than neuronal clusters in area 22 of the right hemisphere.