Localist Topographic Expert Routing: A Barrel Cortex-Inspired Modular Network for Sensorimotor Processing

Biological sensorimotor systems process information through spatially organized, functionally specialized modules. A canonical example is the rodent barrel cortex, in which each vibrissa (whisker) projects to a dedicated cortical column, forming a precise somatotopic map. This anatomical organization stands in stark contrast to the architectures of most artificial neural networks, which are typically monolithic or rely on globally routed mixture-of-experts (MoE) mechanisms. In this work, we introduce a brain-inspired modular architecture that treats the barrel cortex as a biologically constrained instantiation of an expert system. Each module (or "expert") corresponds to a cortical column composed of multiple neuron subtypes spanning vertical cortical layers.