Fig. 4. Schematics of the conventional and proposed models of cortical processing.
(A) In the conventional serial model, sensory information is transformed as excitation spreads from thalamus, to L4, to L2/3, to L5/6 along the most dense axonal pathways (green). (B) In the bistratified model, thalamus copies sensory information to both an upper stratum (L4 and L2/3) and a lower stratum (L5/6), which differs in coding properties and downstream targets.