Pulvinar regulates information transmission between cortical areas based on attention demands

By Y. Saalmann, M. Pinsk, Liang Wang, Liang Wang, Xin Li, Sabine Kastner. Science, 2012

955 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Conductor in the Thalamus The pulvinar is the largest thalamic nucleus in the brain but its functions remain unclear. The pulvinar is ideally positioned to synchronize activity across the visual cortex. Saalmann et al. (p. 753) combined diffusion tensor imaging with multi-electrode recordings from three different brain areas in monkeys to probe thalamo-cortical interactions during visual attention. The pulvinar was found to play a vital role in attention by routing behaviorally relevant information across the visual cortex. A region of the thalamus synchronizes neuronal firing in two cortical areas and thus allocates attention. Selective attention mechanisms route behaviorally relevant information through large-scale cortical networks. Although evidence suggests that populations of cortical neurons synchronize their activity to preferentially transmit information about attentional priorities, it is unclear how cortical synchrony across a network is accomplished. Based on its anatomical connectivity with the cortex, we hypothesized that the pulvinar, a thalamic nucleus, regulates cortical synchrony. We mapped pulvino-cortical networks within the visual system, using diffusion tensor imaging, and simultaneously recorded spikes and field potentials from these interconnected network sites in monkeys performing a visuospatial attention task. The pulvinar synchronized activity between interconnected cortical areas according to attentional allocation, suggesting a critical role for the thalamus not only in attentional selection but more generally in regulating information transmission across the visual cortex.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc20d292f48cff578976dbc7585c22b3686f9b8f

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Citations in the corpus

Canonical microcircuits for predictive coding. (2012, positive): “Furthermore, computational considerations and recent experimental findings point to a potentially important role for higher-order thalamic nuclei in coordinating and synchronizing cortical responses (Vicente et al., 2008; Saalmann et al., 2012).”
Neural Cross-Frequency Coupling: Connecting Architectures, Mechanisms, and Functions. (2015, positive): “As the monkey was paying attention to a given visual stimulus, there was an increase both in theta coherence between V4 site and TEO sites whose receptive ﬁ elds encompass the location of the stimulus, and in theta – gamma PAC within each site [80].”
Neuronal Synchrony in Complex-Valued Deep Networks (2013, background): “It is possible that there are dedicated structures in the brain, such as the pulvinar in the thalamus, that coordinate cross-cortical processing and cortical rhythms (e.g. Shipp, 2003; Saalmann et al., 2012).”
The Theta-Gamma Neural Code (2013, positive): “One possibility is suggested by recent work showing that the thalamus (pulvinar) can coordinate coherent activity in the alpha bands between parts of visual cortex and produce the routing changes that are required for selective attention (Saalmann et al., 2012).”
THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF WORKING MEMORY (2007, background): “An intriguing recent finding suggests a critical role for the thalamus in regulating information transmission across cortical regions, at least at the local level (Saalmann et al. 2012).”
Cortical areas interact through a communication subspace (2019, positive): “, receptive field structure) are related, but not to understand how the moment-by-moment changes in activity in one area relate to those in another area (Saalmann et al., 2012; Salazar et al., 2012).”
EEG and MEG: relevance to neuroscience. (2013, neutral): “…thalamic nuclei, a activity, and attention has received a boost with the demonstration, in themonkey, that the modulation of a rhythms depends on the activity of neuronal populations in the Pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus (Saalmann et al., 2012), related to the attentional state of the animal.”
Thalamic neuromodulation and its implications for executive networks (2014, background): “The absence of the dopamine transporter has clinical implications as well, because this transporter is the point of action of drugs (amphetamines) and toxins (MPTP), suggesting that the midline dopaminergic afferents would be relatively protected against these substances compared to other nuclei…”
Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis (2020, background): “In addition to its role in transmitting arousal and sensory signals, non-sensory nuclei of the thalamus are thought to play a role in working memory (outlined above) and to facilitate the co-ordination of cortical communication (Saalmann et al., 2012, 2014), which is important to a functional GNW.”