Rats

A rather striking image of the cortex of a rat, nose left. Brought to me by the Dana Foundation but actually the work of Bota, Sporns & Swanson, and first published in PNAS, one of the pay as you go repositories of science.

An image built by analysing all known connections between the 75 or so regions of the rat brain and producing a summary diagram, or connectome. Other bits of the brain to the right, in pale grey. Cerebellum top right.

There was a clear division into four zones or modules, with, very roughly speaking: red looking after sight and hearing, blue looking after the body, yellow being front limbic plus smell and green being back limbic. The limbic system in humans being the stuff which sits in the middle, between upper and lower brains and which does all kinds of important things. You don't want to be without one - unlike the cerebellum which, oddly, one can do without, with a case reported quite recently from China.