This chapter presents a brief overview of the macroscopic structure, the microscopic structure, and the embryological genesis of the cerebral cortex. In the last section of this chapter, the quantitative aspects of the cortical morphology are considered. It should be noted that a comprehensive survey of all the known facts about the cortex would be an impossible task. Any selection of facts necessarily reflects the personal opinions of the author regarding the relevance of particular facts and issues. The selection of topics and facts presented here is certainly biased by the general aims of the later chapters and by my view that the brain is essentially deterministic on a large scale, but probabilistic on a small scale.

In studying this chapter, the reader is expected to understand the “classical” views of the cortical anatomy and microscopy, to understand methods and concepts that are dealt with in current neuromorphological research, and to be able to interpret microscopic images in a manner suitable for calculating the probabilities of contact, as described in Chapter 2. Most of this chapter is intended for the reader with little background in neurobiology. The reader who is familiar with the cortical structure may skim this chapter, paying detailed attention only to the tables in Section 1.5.