Topic: visuomotor interactions

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