Conceptual diagram showing a main feature of columnar interaction taking place in barrel cortex: the built-up of a unified percept of sensory information acquired by distinct receptors associated with the vibrissae. This information is sent to the barrel cortex via largely non-overlapping "labeled-line" projections. Only in barrel cortex (or beyond) is this information assembled, via still poorly defined circuits (red = excitatory neurons, blue = inhibitory neurons), to form a coherent representation of the object.

Courtesy of Dirk Schubert and Jochen Staiger, C. & O. Vogt-Institute for Brain Research, Düsseldorf, Germany

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