Nature Neuroscience
8, 1203 - 1209 (2005)
Published online: 21 August 2005; | doi:10.1038/nn1528
Auditory thalamus integrates visual inputs into behavioral gainsYutaka Komura1, Ryoi Tamura2, 3, Teruko Uwano2, 3, Hisao Nishijo3, 4
& Taketoshi Ono3, 51
Neuroscience Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan. 2
Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 2630 Sugitani, Toyama 930-0194, Japan. 3
Core Research for Evolutionary Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 4-1-8 Honcho, Kawaguchi 332-0012, Japan. 4
System Emotional Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 2630 Sugitani, Toyama 930-0194, Japan. 5
Molecular and Integrative Emotional Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 2630 Sugitani, Toyama 930-0194, Japan.
Correspondence should be addressed to Taketoshi Ono onotake@ms.toyama-mpu.ac.jp By binding multisensory signals, we get robust percepts and respond to our surroundings more correctly and quickly. How and where does the brain link cross-modal sensory information to produce such behavioral advantages? The classical role of sensory thalamus is to relay modality-specific information to the cortex. Here we find that, in the rat thalamus, visual cues influence auditory responses, which have two distinct components: an early phasic one followed by a late gradual buildup that peaks before reward. Although both bimodal presentation and reward value had similar effects on behavioral performance, the cross-modal effect on neural activity showed unique temporal dynamics: it affected the amplitude of the early component and starting level of the late component, whereas reward value affected only the slope of the late component. These results demonstrate that cross-modal cueing modulates gain in the sensory thalamus, potentially providing a priming influence on the choice of an optimal behavior.
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