[Verse 1]
Macaque brain maps a monkey's reaching hand,
Seven-b, then PFG, then seven-a across the land,
Now stretch that homunculus, let it drift and bloom,
Into human PF, PFm, PGa, PGp's room,
But aSMG stands defiant, a stranger in the chart,
Ventral patches whisper "we're a brand new part,"
Homology's a bridge with planks still loose,
Evolution's tailor left some edges unused.
[Chorus]
PF, PFm, PGa, PGp, climbing up the parietal stair,
Trace the arc from seven-a to a patch that wasn't there,
Julich cuts it thin, HCP paints it wide,
Two hundred multimodal borders, same gray hillside,
Follow fibers, question maps, let the data be your guide.
[Verse 2]
Julich-Brain slices cells beneath the lens so fine,
HCP-MMP draws function along a different line,
Layer them together, it's a palimpsest of sorts,
Old traced boundaries bleeding through the newer, scanned reports,
SLF and MdLF go chasing through the white,
VOF stands vertical, a fence against the sight,
Tractography dreams up pathways, bold and free,
But only tracer dye in brains confirms what's true to see.
[Verse 3]
LIP lights up with evidence, VIP leans to the heading too,
Decisions ride their firing like a compass built from blue,
Then silence the neurons, cool them, watch behavior stay,
The signal was there shouting, yet the function walked away,
That's degeneracy talking — many paths, one goal,
Redundant circuits sharing load, no single area whole,
Correlation flirts with causal, but they're not the same first date,
Inactivation is the honest judge who won't negotiate.
[Verse 4]
Laminar fMRI counts the cortex floor by floor,
Feedback drifting downward, feedforward through the core,
Neuropixels drop a thousand needles in the geometry,
Testing if the population's curve matches theory's symmetry,
Circuits aren't a rumor now, they're voltage, layer, time,
Methods climbing finer, resolution redefined.
[Bridge]
Posterior hot zone simmers, Tononi's quiet claim,
That parietal, occipital fire hold the conscious flame,
Cogitate sends IIT against Global Workspace might,
Electrodes watching parietal cortex settle out the fight,
Is the content built right here, or just reported through,
A courtroom made of cortex, and the verdict isn't due.
[Chorus]
PF, PFm, PGa, PGp, climbing up the parietal stair,
Trace the arc from seven-a to a patch that wasn't there,
Julich cuts it thin, HCP paints it wide,
Two hundred multimodal borders, same gray hillside,
Follow fibers, question maps, let the data be your guide.
[Outro]
Homology, degeneracy, the hot zone's open door,
Every answer in parietal cortex just unlocks one more.