title: Attention: the claustrum.
abstract: The claustrum is a mysterious thin sheet of neurons lying between the insular cortex and the striatum. It is reciprocally connected with almost all cortical areas, including motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory, limbic, associative, and prefrontal cortices. In addition, it receives neuromodulatory input from subcortical structures. A decade ago, Sir Francis Crick and Christof Koch published an influential review proposing the claustrum as the 'seat of consciousness', spurring a revival of interest in the claustrum. We review the literature on the claustrum, emphasizing recent discoveries, and develop a detailed hypothesis describing a role for the claustrum in the segregation of attention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Chemistry, Institute of Life Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Yael
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Goll
authors.affiliation: Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Gal
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Atlan
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Chemistry, Institute of Life Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel; Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Electronic address: ami.citri@mail.huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Ami
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Citri
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology
keywords: attention; bottom up; claustrum; cortex; sensory modalities; top down