Thalamocortical neurons in dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) dynamically convey visual information from retina to the neocortex. Activation of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) exerts multiple effects on neural integration in dLGN; however, their direct influence on the primary sensory input, namely retinogeniculate afferents, is unknown. In the present study, we found that pharm...

The development of connections between thalamic afferents and their cortical target cells occurs in a highly precise manner. Thalamic axons enter the cortex through deep cortical layers, then stop their growth in layer 4 and elaborate terminal arbors specifically within this layer. The mechanisms that underlie target layer recognition for thalamocortical projections are not known. We compared t...

The rodent ventrobasal (VB) thalamus receives sensory inputs from the whiskers and projects to the cortex, from which it receives reciprocal excitatory afferents. Much is known about the properties and functional roles of these glutamatergic inputs to thalamocortical neurons in the VB, but no data are available on how these afferents can affect thalamic glial cells. In this study, we used combi...

A growing number of in vivo experiments shows that high frequency bursts of action potentials can be recorded in thalamocortical neurons of awake animals. The mechanism underlying these bursts, however, remains controversial, because they have been proposed to depend on T-type Ca(2+) channels that are inactivated at the depolarized membrane potentials usually associated with the awake state. He...

All neocortical areas receive thalamic inputs. Some thalamocortical pathways relay information from ascending pathways (first order thalamic relays) and others relay information from other cortical areas (higher order thalamic relays), thus serving a role in corticocortical communication. Most, possibly all, afferents reaching thalamus, ascending and cortical, are branches of axons that innerva...

Genes that control the specification and differentiation of the functionally specialized areas of the mammalian neocortex are likely expressed across the developing neocortex in graded or restricted patterns. To search for such genes we have performed a PCR-based differential display screen using RNAs from rostral neocortex, which included the primary motor area, and caudal neocortex, which inc...

Electroencephalographic generalized spike and wave discharges (SWD), the hallmark of human absence seizures, are generated in thalamocortical networks. However, the potential alterations in these networks in terms of the efficacy of the reciprocal synaptic activities between the cortex and the thalamus are not known in this pathology. Here, the efficacy of these reciprocal connections is assess...

The widely spanning sensory cortex receives inputs from the disproportionately smaller nucleus of the thalamus, which results in a wide variety of travelling distance among thalamic afferents. Yet, latency from the thalamus to a cortical cell is remarkably constant across the cortex (typically, approximately 2 ms). Here, we found a mechanism that produces invariability of latency among thalamoc...