Cingulate Cortex - History

History

Cingulum means belt in Latin. The name was likely chosen because this cortex, in great part, surrounds the corpus callosum. Cingulate is an adjective (cingularis or cingulatus).

The cingulate cortex is a part of the "grand lobe limbique" of Broca (1898) that consisted (in addition to the olfactory part, which is no more considered there today) of a superior cingulate part, supracallosal; and an inferior hippocampic part, infracallosal. The limbic lobe was separated from the remainder of the cortex by Broca for two reasons: first that it is not convoluted, and second that the gyri are directed parasagittally (contrary to the transverse gyrification). Since the parasagittal gyrification is observed in non-primate species, the limbic lobe was thus declared to be "bestial". As with other parts of the cortex, there have been and continue to be discrepancies concerning boundaries and naming. Brodmann (1909), a student of Cécile Vogt-Mugnier and Oskar Vogt, who worked on cercopithecus (and not much in human ), elaborated a system of numeration that had unfortunately no typological logics (1, 2 and 3 are sensory, 4 is motor, 5 is parietal, 6 is premotor and 7 is again parietal!). Area 25 was even not placed by him in the same place in the human brain. Area 24 (anterior) was distinguished from 23 (posterior) on the basis that it was agranular. More recently, the typographical von Economo's system was adopted by Bailey and von Bonin. Simple typographical naming should be preferred, for evident heuristic purposes.