How to Use neocortex in a Sentence

neocortex

noun
  • Rhythm dances with our neocortex to make way for a breath of relaxation.
    — Alex Wagner, SPIN, 1 Feb. 2022
  • The muscle to build is to stay in the neocortex, which is the conscious thinking brain.
    — Dede Henley, Forbes, 26 Sep. 2021
  • Our brains are triple the size of more primitive primates, thanks to our large neocortex.
    — Linda Marsa, Discover Magazine, 30 Nov. 2015
  • Groups of neurons in the neocortex encode these memories of objects and past events.
    — Andrey Vyshedskiy, The Conversation, 23 Feb. 2023
  • In humans, the neocortex is larger than in apes, giving us the skills and intelligence that are unique to us.
    — Luis E. Romero, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021
  • The neocortex—the part of the brain that evolved most recently—is critical to this ability.
    — Theodor Schaarschmidt, Scientific American, 11 July 2018
  • Some longer-term memories are stored outside the hippocampus, in the neocortex.
    — Carina Woudenberg, Discover Magazine, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Even without most of their neocortex, the rats played in a fundamentally normal way.
    — Big Think, 22 Oct. 2025
  • The hippocampus, neocortex, and amygdala all work to keep these episodic memories stored.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 24 Sep. 2025
  • The neocortex might play a key role in more complex recognition exercises where the face is turned or the lighting is altered.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 7 June 2016
  • An example of this filtering is evident in the structure of the neocortex.
    — Ginny Whitelaw, Forbes, 1 Jan. 2022
  • The neocortex is the part of the brain that processes higher functions such as cognition and perception.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 9 June 2023
  • The hippocampus is then cleared to gather more the next day, while the neocortex decides what to transfer to long-term memory and what to discard.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 12 Sep. 2017
  • As evolution continued, higher mammals came on the scene with a new brain component called the neocortex.
    — Luis E. Romero, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021
  • That’s the data providing support for the neocortex findings.
    — Cathleen O'Grady, Ars Technica, 23 Aug. 2018
  • Later, this data is sometimes transferred to the neocortex — the thin tissue that forms the brain’s outer layer — for long-term storage.
    — Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 14 June 2020
  • The brain moves information from the hippocampus–where short-term memories are stored into the neocortex.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 12 Dec. 2024
  • Fish, however, do not have a neocortex in their brains so the propagating wave sleep is not the same as REM sleep.
    — Discover Magazine, 1 Oct. 2024
  • The neocortex is also essential to learning, attention, and sight in humans.
    — Ali Francis, Bon Appétit, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The team identified memory cells in the neocortex — the brain’s outer layers, which house long-term memories — within just a day of the shock.
    — Jessica McDonald, Discover Magazine, 1 Feb. 2018
  • For us, the key brain regions are in the neocortex, particularly part of the parietal lobes of the humans—also the parietal lobes of the monkeys.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 3 June 2022
  • Why neurons have thousands of synapses, a theory of sequence memory in neocortex.
    — Ted Ladd, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Most of us assume that facial recognition is a skill that requires a large and specialized part of the brain (the neocortex) that only primates and some birds possess.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 17 Jan. 2026
  • The neocortex is involved in high-level cognition such as self-awareness, problem solving, and intellect.
    — Lina Zeldovich, Smithsonian, 24 Mar. 2017
  • After three to five weeks, the team would collect PET scans of the synapses in each person’s neocortex and hippocampus.
    — WIRED, 26 Oct. 2023
  • Throughout recent evolution, the neocortex has massively grown in size compared with other brain regions.
    — Ashley Maynard, The Conversation, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Grant, who was not involved in the project, explained that the structure of the sample was probably representative of the brain's entire neocortex.
    — NBC News, 15 June 2021
  • But their lack of a neocortex—the area of the mammalian brain where working memory, planning, and problem solving happen—has long puzzled scientists.
    — Virginia Morell, Science | AAAS, 24 Sep. 2020
  • How often a primate species lies is correlated with the size of its neocortex, the part of the brain where higher order functions like spatial reasoning occur.
    — Paul Tullis, Town & Country, 30 Apr. 2023
  • The neocortex, a layer covering the brain, emerged in mammals two hundred million years ago and is organized as a hierarchy of modules.
    — Ray Kurzweil, New York Times, 14 Mar. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'neocortex.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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