A realistic computer simulation of primary somatosensory cortex replicating static properties of topographic organization

A model of the somatosensory system has been constructed with the neuro-simulator GENESIS as a network of 1,024 pyramidal cells and 512 baskets cells connected to 512 tactile receptors representing the hand surface reproducing processes of formation and maintenance of somatotopic maps. The model presents results such as variability in the shapes and sizes of the areas of cortical representation, values of cortical magnifications in agreement with experimental findings and linear decay of receptive fields overlap as a function of cortical distance between recording sites in normal conditions.