Pioneering Neuroscientist Dies

Vernon Mountcastle, who mapped the functional landscape of the neocortex, passed away at age 96.

kerry grens
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JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINEVernon Mountcastle, the Johns Hopkins neuroscientist whose work described the columns of neurons that create a functional organization in the cortex of the mammalian brain, died this month (January 11) from complications of the flu. He was 96.

“He was one of the great giants in neuroscience research,” Mountcastle’s colleague at Hopkins, Solomon Snyder, told The Washington Post.

Mountcastle was trained as a neurosurgeon, and opted for research on the basics of neuronal functioning. In the 1950s, he was recording neurons in the cat neocortex when he recognized a pattern: those neurons that responded similarly to a stimulus—say, a particular type of touch—were stacked on top of one another. According to the Post, “Dr. Mountcastle’s theory was so controversial that when the paper describing the results of the experiment came out in 1957, he was the sole author. Two other researchers declined to have their names attached to the article lest it hurt their careers, he once wrote.”

Yet, his conclusions were independently ...

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  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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