Cognitive Thalamic Networks and the Mechanisms of     Complex Behavior

    Cell populations across brain regions carefully orchestrate their spiking activity in order to represent, exchange, and preserve information... but, how do they do so? and how do these interactions between anatomically distant brain regions underlie complex processes like working and long-term memory, learning, or the switch between different computational states such as sleep and wakefulness?
    

     The thalamus is a key hub that regulates the flow of information in the forebrain. Cells in the midline thalamus are directly connected to cortical regions involved in cognitive function, like the hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex. Essential goals to understand the network mechanisms of cognitive behavior include figuring out the integrated dynamics of these cross-regional networks, as well as discovering the fundamental computations contributed by the midline thalamus. 

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