title: The Thalamus as a Low Pass Filter: Filtering at the Cellular Level does Not Equate with Filtering at the Network Level.
abstract: In the mammalian central nervous system, most sensory information passes through primary sensory thalamic nuclei, however the consequence of this remains unclear. Various propositions exist, likening the thalamus to a gate, or a high pass filter. Here, using a simple leaky integrate and fire model based on physiological parameters, we show that the thalamus behaves akin to a low pass filter. Specifically, as individual cells in the thalamus rely on consistent drive to spike, stimuli that is rapidly and continuously changing over time such that it activates sensory cells with different receptive fields are unable to drive thalamic spiking. This means that thalamic encoding is robust to sensory noise, however it induces a lag in sensory representation. Thus, the thalamus stabilizes encoding of sensory information, at the cost of response rate.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuroscience, School of Biosciences, Cardiff UniversityCardiff, UK; Eccles Institute of Neuroscience, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National UniversityCanberra, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: William M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Connelly
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laing
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, Cardiff University Cardiff, UK.
authors.forename: Adam C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Errington
authors.affiliation: Division of Neuroscience, School of Biosciences, Cardiff UniversityCardiff, UK; Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of MaltaMsida, Malta.
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Crunelli
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D019706:Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D018408:Patch-Clamp Techniques; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012165:Retinal Ganglion Cells / Q000502:physiology; D013788:Thalamus / Q000502:physiology*; D046509:Tissue Culture Techniques
keywords: computational neuroscience; integrate-and-fire neuron; neural noise; sensory neuroscience; thalamus
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