Thalamus

…hippocampus, fornix, basal ganglia and thalamus, with further exploration of the brainstem and cerebellum. Traditional blunt dissection reveals major pathways, while axial, sagittal and coronal MRI comparisons connect anatomy to imaging. Consolidation and self-assessment sessions help participants test their recognition of structures. Live online via Zoom

…of the cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus to behavior? In addressing these questions, we often ascribe function to each area as if it were an independent processing unit. However, we know from the anatomy that the cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus, are ma

…The motor cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus form a multiregional neural network, known as the cortico-basal ganglia thalamocortical (CBGTC) loop, which controls various aspects of motor behaviors, including the timing of actions [1]. For example, in mice performing a delayed licking task, average activity in the striatum and cortex ramp up to a threshold for executing a lick [2]. However, the distinct contributions from different cell types and regions within the CBGTC loop remain largely unknown due to the similarity in their r

A major organizing principle of the brain proposes that the cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus are interconnected in parallel recurrent loops. According to this model, the two principal basal ganglia pathways – termed direct and indirect – are thought to excite and inhibit cortical activity via their outputs to thalamus. Here, we test this model by simultaneously recording activity across cortex and striatum, while inhibiting the direct or indirect basal ganglia pathway as mice perform an evidence-accumulation task in which each manipulation produces opposing decision biases. Inconsistent wit

Early postnatal development is a critical period for the establishment of functional brain networks. While extensive research has focused on local circuit maturation, the emergence and evolution of long-range communication between brain regions has received less attention. Here we investigate the developmental trajectory of inter-regional communication in the mouse brain over the first two postnatal weeks of life, a period characterised by rapid synaptogenesis followed by activity-dependent pruning and circuit refinement. We leverage electrophysiological datasets of population activity simulta

…The thalamus and its cortical connections play a crucial role in the pathophysiology of psychosis (Onofrj et al. 2023; Moustafa et al. 2017). However, despite often referred to as one structure, the thalamus is composed of separate nuclei with distinct cortical connections (Sherman and Guillery 2006). Recent investigations revealed lower volumes of only the medial thalamic subnuclei in first-episode psychosis patients (Thalhammer et al., 2023, in revision). Correspondingl

…organization in the Brainstem → Thalamus → Cortex axis. This organization results in the formation of barrels and intervening "spaces" known as septa. Our in-vivo silicon probe recordings, conducted simultan

The thalamus is a highly complex region of the brain, with a multitude of molecularly diverse cell types originating from neural progenitor cells during development in a series of highly temporally and spatially orchestrated events. However, the molecular logic that governs the spatio-temporal lineage trajectories of specification between mature cell types and progenitor cells in the thalamus remains poorly understood. In this study, we aim to investigate the role of transcription factors in specifying neural fate and regulating neural lineage progression in the developing thalamus. Using a co

Tone discrimination is a behavioral task to investigate learning and memory processes in rodents. Additional punishment (aP) can be applied to enhance discrimination abilities; however, some animals have difficulties learning the task with aP. To understand this effect, we conducted auditory fMRI in Mongolian gerbils throughout discrimination training with rising (GO) and falling (noGo) frequency-modulated (FM) tones in ten daily sessions (S), enforced through foot shocks for “Miss”; a second group additionally received aP for “False‑Alarm”. Gerbils of each training group were divided into “go

…and RNA sequencing (RNAseq) of the thalamus were performed. Differential expressed genes (DEGs) and enriched categories were validated in silico via MAGMA using GWAS summary statistics of the Psych

Cajal-Retzius (CR) cells are essential players in early brain development. In the first postnatal week (P0-P7), these glutamatergic cells densely populate the most superficial layer of the cerebral cortex, providing a transient source of excitatory inputs to immature pyramidal neurons. In the murine brain, CR cells are greatly reduced in the neocortex after postnatal week two, whereas in hippocampus, they persist throughout postnatal development and even into adulthood. During this time, they are integrated in the CA1 network, and recent work (Glærum et al. 2024) has showed that their persiste

The dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) contains the largest population of serotonergic (5-HT) neurons in the central nervous system. The DRN modulates a wide range of physiological functions and brain states, mostly due to its widespread and heterogeneous projections. Evidence suggests that the DRN comprises different sub-systems with distinct neurotransmitter phenotype, connectivity and function. These sub-systems are difficult to characterize in the complex mammalian DRN. To overcome this, we address these questions in zebrafish larvae, leveraging their simpler and conserved DRN.Here, we establish a

…discharges (SWDs) in the cortex and thalamus. Seizure expression varied among animals, with slow (4 – 5 Hz) and/or fast (6 - 8 Hz) SWDs present. Slow 4-5 Hz SWDs occurred during passive wakefulness and were abundant du

To circumvent the challenges of longitudinal human studies, rodents can be leveraged as they have experimentally tractable lifespans. At present, only limited number of studies have tracked longitudinal resting-state functional connectivity in rodents, with these studies only using male animals. The aim of this study is to determine sex-specific developmental trajectories of brain development using functional connectivity analysis. Male and female Wistar rats were scanned at postnatal day 28, 35, 49, 70 and 91 under light sedation. Functional connectivity was measured between several regions o

…It is highly expressed in the thalamus - candidate structure for NDs pathogenesis - regulating its electrophysiological maturation. To understand the role of thalamus-expressed Tcf7l2 in signal processing in thalamocortical circuits, we investigated consequences of its deficiency in the somatosensory circuit: first- and higher-order thalamic nuclei (VPM and POM) and the barrel cortex.Tcf7l2 postnatal thalamic knockout mice were used to assess signal gating mechanism in v

The basal ganglia (BG) circuit, together with the motor cortex and the thalamus, plays an essential role in voluntary movement. In Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, these structures exhibit exaggerated oscillations in the beta frequencies (10-30 Hz), a phenomenon also observed in animal models of parkinsonism, namely rats and non-human primates (NHP). Several potential generation mechanisms explaining this oscillatory activity have been hypothesized in various theoretical models, but a consensus has yet to be reached. Moreover, the extensive literature characterizing these oscillations and th

…the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the thalamus, in patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show a reduced volume relative to people who are not diagnosed with PTSD. There are also findings of a reduction of the volume of the corpus callosum in male children that have experienced child maltreatment and female children that have experienced sexual abuse. In this study, we aim to expand this finding to a broader population of trauma-survivors who experienced childhood neglect and/or potentially tr

Aims. While human neuroscience has traditionally focused on the neocortex, recent literature highlights the key role of subcortical structures in brain dynamics and cognitive processes. We investigated cortico-subcortical interactions in the human brain at rest by analyzing dynamic functional connectivity at rest in a large cohort of healthy human participants.Methods. We considered 1078 human participants from the Human Connectome Project, for which resting-state fMRI scans were available. We computed sliding window functional connectivity (sw-FC) on windows of 60 s. sw-FC matrices were appro

The posterior medial nucleus (POm) of the thalamus represents a higher-order thalamic nucleus characterized by its reciprocal connections with the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). It exhibits intricate projections to and from motor, premotor, association cortices, and the brainstem. Owing to its distinct firing characteristics and multifaced connectivity profiles, various functions ranging from maintaining arousal to higher somatosensory processing have been attributed to it. To address functional features of the mouse POm, we image relay neuron activity in freely moving mice while they perf

…including the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, and cortex It has been hypothesized that these distributed engrams are functionally connected [2] This neural network can be specifically reactivated, resulting in the recall of the original memory [3]However, how the interaction among multiple regions facilitates the consolidation, o

Animals must react to threatening stimuli in a way that increases their chance of survival. The visual loom is a known threatening stimulus that emulates an approaching predator and mainly elicits the C-startle escape response in larval zebrafish. However, the behavioral space of the response to the visual looms may also involve freezing and other types of swim bouts. In this work, we carried out free swimming behavioral experiments and immunofluorescence imaging protocols to explore the differences between types of visual looms and how they affect behavioral output through habituation and cha

…targeting of different nuclei in the thalamus for the treatment of pain”. Veerle Visser-Vandewalle, MD, PhD, is the Head of the Department of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at University Hospital of Cologne. Beside his scientific presentation on “25 years of DBS beyond movement disorders: what challenges are we fac

…anterior dorsal nucleus (ADn) of the thalamus in freely moving sighted and blind animals. First, we found that both congenitally blind and late-onset blind anim

…however, have concluded that the thalamus and other subcortical structures participate in this function. A comprehensive computational framework to link neural dynamics and cognition in the context of large-scale subcortical-cortical circuits is lacking. In this computational study, we elucidated the dynamical mechanisms by which the cortex, thalamus and other subcortical structures jointly contribute to planning. Recurrent circuitry in the cort