Jon Kaas is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He has made discoveries about the organization of the mammalian brain, including the description of many areas of the cerebral cortex and their neuroplasticity. Work from the Kaas's laboratory is notable for its emphasis on evolutionary biology. Kaas's approach is to try to understand how complex brains evolved from ancestor forms which had relatively few areas. Some of the career highlights include: * Some of the first descriptions of topographically organized areas in the

extrastriate cortex The extrastriate cortex is the region of the occipital cortex of the mammalian brain located next to the primary visual cortex. Primary visual cortex (V1) is also named striate cortex because of its striped appearance in the microscope. The extra ...

primates Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

, including the middle temporal area MT, or V5 (Allman and Kaas, 1971), and the dorsomedial area, or V6. * Demonstration of changes in the topographic representation of sensory organs in the cerebral cortex after lesions of the

sensory organs A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...

(Kaas et al. 1990; see also neuroplasticity).

References

Other sources

*Allman JM, Kaas JH (1971) A representation of the visual field in the caudal third of the middle temporal gyrus of the owl monkey (

Aotus trivirgatus The three-striped night monkey (''Aotus trivirgatus''), also known as northern night monkey or northern owl monkey, is one of several species of owl monkeys currently recognised. It is found in Venezuela and north-central Brazil. Until 1983, all ...

). Brain Res 31(1):85-105. *Allman JM, Kaas JH (1975) The dorsomedial cortical visual area: a third tier area in the occipital lobe of the owl monkey (Aotus trivirgatus). Brain Res 1 Living people American neuroscientists Vanderbilt University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) {{US-academic-scientist-stub