Microstructural Parcellation of the Human Cerebral Cortex

Abstract

In 1925 Constantin von Economo (1876–1931) and Georg N. Koskinas (1885–1975), working in the Psychiatric Clinic of Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940) at the University of Vienna, published their monumental Atlas and Textbook of Cytoarchitectonics of the Adult Human Cerebral Cortex, following in the footsteps of Theodor Meynert (1833–1892) and Korbinian Brodmann (1868–1918). Von Economo and Koskinas provided a much more detailed verbal and pictorial description of the variations in cellular structure (cytoarchitecture) of cerebral cortical layers, compared to Brodmann. By dissecting each gyrus and sulcus perpendicularly to its axis, von Economo and Koskinas successfully addressed the core problem of flattening out the convoluted polyhedral surface of the human cerebral mantle. They defined five structural cortical types (agranular, frontal, parietal, polar, and granulous) and 107 cytoarchitectonic area modifications (35 frontal, 13 limbic, 6 insular, 18 parietal, 7 occipital, 14 temporal, and 14 hippo- campal).