Cortex (neuroanatomy)

In neuroanatomy the cortex is the outermost layer of the brain. It is rich in neurons and is the site of most sophisticated neural processing (See also: cerebral cortex). Or, more generally, the outermost portion of certain biological structures (See below). The human cortex is 1–4 mm thick, with an area (if it were spread flat) of about 0.22 m². It comprises perhaps 10⁹ neurons, which appear to be organized in clusters called minicolumns, each having 80–100 neurons in a diameter of 30–50 µm.