The Role of Corticothalamic Feedback in the Response Mode Transition of

Abstract—Thalamus is the relay station for most sensory information between peripheral receptors and the cortical areas. There is cumulative evidence showing that thalamus actively gates information flow. An important issue about this role is that thalamus adjusts its response mode according to the sensory information arrived. The corticothalamic feedback signal has been suggested to be essential for such adjustment. In this paper, we pieced together the experimental evidence in a realistic multi-layer network model of the thalamocortical circuit and examined its behavior in response to sinusoidal inputs. The results reproduced the burst/tonic responsive modes and feedback signal’s role in mode transition. Keywords-thalamus; cortex; feedback; response mode. I