A cortical column, also called hypercolumn or sometimes cortical module, is a group of neurons in the cortex of the brain which can be successively penetrated by a probe inserted perpendicularly to the cortical surface, and which have nearly identical receptive fields. Neurons within a minicolumn encode similar features, whereas a hypercolumn "denotes a unit containing a full set of values for any given set of receptive field parameters". A cortical module is defined as either synonymous with a hypercolumn (Mountcastle) or as a tissue block of multiple overlapping hypercolumns (Hubel&Wiesel).
Although the column is an attractive concept, it has failed as a unifying principle for understanding cortical function. It is still unclear what precisely is meant by the term, and it does not correspond to any single structure within the cortex. It has been impossible to find a canonical microcircuit that corresponds to the cortical column, and no genetic mechanism has been deciphered that designates how to construct a column.
Read more about Cortical Column: Mammalian Cerebral Cortex, Hubel and Wiesel Studies, Size of Cortex
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