Ruadhan,
A few more figures for you: The smallest unit of neural organization
seems to be
the "minicolumn", such as the orientation-specific columns in V1. These
columns,
about 30 um in size, contain only about a hundred neurons. These columns
may
be due to vertical bundles of apical dendrites (Journal of Comparative
Neurology
306:1-23 1991). About 300 minicolumns make up a macrocolumn, which is
about
.4 - .7 mm wide.
Computer simulation, eh? Sounds interesting. Are you hoping to get it to
accomplish some particular sort of processing?
Hope this is helpful,
Michael Ferrier
MRFerrier at aol.com
