title: Tapping the Brakes: Cellular and Synaptic Mechanisms that Regulate Thalamic Oscillations.
abstract: Thalamic oscillators contribute to both normal rhythms associated with sleep and anesthesia and abnormal, hypersynchronous oscillations that manifest behaviorally as absence seizures. In this review, we highlight new findings that refine thalamic contributions to cortical rhythms and suggest that thalamic oscillators may be subject to both local and global control. We describe endogenous thalamic mechanisms that limit network synchrony and discuss how these protective brakes might be restored to prevent absence seizures. Finally, we describe how intrinsic and circuit-level specializations among thalamocortical loops may determine their involvement in widespread oscillations and render subsets of thalamic nuclei especially vulnerable to pathological synchrony.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
authors.forename: P Michelle
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Fogerson
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Electronic address: john.huguenard@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Huguenard
mesh_terms: D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013787:Thalamic Nuclei / Q000502:physiology; D013788:Thalamus / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology
keywords: absence epilepsy; oscillation; reticular nucleus; sparse networks; spindle; synchrony; thalamus