Locations of different types of SC-projecting cells relative to CO blob centers. Blob distance index (BDI) is determined for three cell types: layer 5 tall-tufted, layer 5 nontufted, and layer 6 nontufted. A: BDI value of 1 indicates that the apical dendrite of the cell lies directly in or underneath the center of an interblob, at an equal distance from the two closest blobs, and a BDI of 0 means directly in or underneath the center of a blob. Every neuron from the unbiased sample (n =107) is plotted as a separate symbol. Layer 5 tall-tufted cells (n =43) have no preference for either blob or inter-blob regions, with BDI values evenly distributed (median =0.50, min =0.05, first quartile =0.25, third quartile =0.86, max =0.98, box-whisker plot). The nontufted cells in layer 5 (n =36) and layer 6 (n =11) tend to be located preferentially under blobs with median BDI values of 0.31 and 0.16, respectively. The distributions of BDIs for both the layer 5 and layer 6 nontufted cells are significantly smaller than for layer 5 tall-tufted cells (P < 0.05, Wilcoxon rank sum test).