Thalamic amplification of cortical connectivity sustains attentional control | Nature

The mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus amplifies the functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex, thereby sustaining cortical representations of rule sets without relaying categorical information.

Subjects Attention Cognitive control Neural circuits Abstract Although interactions between the thalamus and cortex are critical for cognitive function 1 , 2 , 3 , the exact contribution of the thalamus to these interactions remains unclear. Recent studies have shown diverse connectivity patterns across the thalamus 4 , 5 , but whether this diversity translates to thalamic functions beyond relaying information to or between cortical regions 6 is unknown. Here we show, by investigating the representation of two rules used to guide attention in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC), that the mediodo

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