Interdigitation of contralateral and ipsilateral columnar projections to frontal association cortex in primates

Abstract

The combined use of two anterograde axonal transport methods reveals that in the prefrontal association cortex of macaque monkeys, associational projections from the parietal lobe of one hemisphere interdigitate with callosal projections from the opposite frontal lobe, forming adjacent columns 300 to 750 micrometers wide. The finding of separate and alternating ipsilateral and contralateral inputs in the frontal association cortex opens up new possibilities for the functional analysis of this large but unexplored area of the primate brain.