Jiamin Bu1  · Guangwei Xu1  · Yifeng Zhou1,2

1 Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Science at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China 

2 State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Science, Hefei 230026, China

Abstract

The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) plays a crucial role in regulating sensory encoding, even at the earliest stages of visual processing, as evidenced by numerous studies. Orientation selectivity, a vital neural response, is essential for detecting objects through edge perception. Here, we demonstrate that somatostatin (SOM)-expressing and parvalbumin (PV)-expressing neurons in the TRN project to the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus and modulate orientation selectivity and the capacity for visual information processing in the primary visual cortex (V1). These findings show that SOM-positive and PV-positive neurons in the TRN are powerful modulators of visual information encoding in V1, revealing a novel role for this thalamic nucleus in influencing visual processing.

Keywords

Thalamic reticular nucleus; Parvalbuminpositive neurons; Somatostatin-positive neurons; Primary visual cortex; Dorsal lateral geniculate nuclei; Receptive feld properties

[SpringerLink]