Topic: neocortical microcircuit

Sensory systems in the mammalian brain exhibit rich representations that ultimately support complex behaviours. Microcircuits across neocortical layers are believed to underlie the development of these representations, but exactly how this occurs remains unclear. In the canonical view of the neocortical microcircuit, first-order thalamic projections target layer 4 (L4), which in turn projects onto layer 2/3 (L2/3) pyramidal cells (PCs) and then finally onto layer 5 (L5) PCs. Although this is a motif found throughout the neocortex, the functional role of this architecture is not known. Here, in

In the canonical view of the neocortical microcircuit, first-order thalamic projections target layer 4 (L4), which in turn projects onto layer 2/3 (L2/3) pyramidal cells (PCs) and then finally onto layer 5 (L5) PCs. Although this is a motif found throughout the neocortex, the functional role of this architecture has remained unclear. Here, inspired by recent observations showing that first-order thalamic input also targets L5 pyramidal cells, we propose that the canonical microcircuit enables the brain to learn through temporal self-supervision. In our model, L2/3 PCs learn to predict thalami