title: Pulvinar-Cortex Interactions in Vision and Attention.
abstract: The ventro-lateral pulvinar is reciprocally connected with the visual areas of the ventral stream that are important for object recognition. To understand the mechanisms of attentive stimulus processing in this pulvinar-cortex loop, we investigated the interactions between the pulvinar, area V4, and IT cortex in a spatial-attention task. Sensory processing and the influence of attention in the pulvinar appeared to reflect its cortical inputs. However, pulvinar deactivation led to a reduction of attentional effects on firing rates and gamma synchrony in V4, a reduction of sensory-evoked responses and overall gamma coherence within V4, and severe behavioral deficits in the affected portion of the visual field. Conversely, pulvinar deactivation caused an increase in low-frequency cortical oscillations, often associated with inattention or sleep. Thus, cortical interactions with the ventro-lateral pulvinar are necessary for normal attention and sensory processing and for maintaining the cortex in an active state.
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, China. Electronic address: hh.zhou@siat.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Huihui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Robert John
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Schafer
authors.affiliation: McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Desimone
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D020649:Pulvinar / Q000502:physiology*; D013788:Thalamus / Q000502:physiology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*