Integrative Mechanisms of the Cerebral Cortex and its Functional and Structural Features

The cerebral cortex is the highest section of the central nervous system. It is the material basis with which complex forms of behavior of higher animals and humans are associated. In recent years, microelectrode technology has been widely used to study the physiology of the cerebral cortex, along with traditional approaches (extirpation, stimulation, conditioned reflex method), the capabilities of which allow us to study processes occurring directly in nerve cells. This has made it possible to obtain fundamentally new data on the mechanisms of analysis of specific afferent signals at the level of individual neurons, the study of processes underlying the integration of different-modal specific and non-specific afferent impulses, and the nature of cortical inhibition.