User:Jtwsaddress42/Quotes/Edelman, Gerald M. 1992(a)e

The Thalamocortical System "'The thalamocortical system consists of the thalamus and the cortex acting together, a system evolved to receive signals from the sensory receptor sheets and to give signals to voluntary muscles. It is very fast in its responses (taking from milliseconds to seconds), although its synaptic connections undergo some changes that last a lifetime. (...) Unlike the limbic-brain stem system, it does not contain loops so much as highly connected layered structures with massively reentrant connections. In many places these are topographically arranged.  The cerebral cortex is a structure adapted to receive a dense and rapid series of signals from the world through the sensory modalities simultaneously - sight, touch, taste, smell, joint sense (feeling the position of your extremeties).  It evolved later than the limbic-brain stem system to permit increasingly sophisticated motor behavior and the categorization of world events.'

Gerald M. Edelman (1992)"