Canonical circuits of the cerebral cortex as enablers of neuroprosthetics

“. . . each technical advance over the past century has reaffirmed that repeated patterns of structure and function are seen at every level, from molecule to cell to circuit, and that many of these patterns are common across cortical areas and species. In this context, the concept of a canonical circuit, like the concept of hierarchies of processing, offers a powerful unifying principle that links structural and functional levels of analysis across species and different areas of the cortex” (Douglas and Martin, 2010, p. 20).