Auditory thalamus integrates visual inputs into behavioral gains

• Published in: Nature neuroscience Vol. 8; no. 9; pp. 1203 - 1209
• Main Authors: Ono, Taketoshi, Komura, Yutaka, Tamura, Ryoi, Uwano, Teruko, Nishijo, Hisao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Nature Publishing Group 01.09.2005
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation - methods; Action Potentials - physiology; Analysis of Variance; Animals; Auditory cortex; Auditory Perception - physiology; Behavior, Animal; Brain Mapping; Brain stimulation; Functional Laterality - physiology; Male; Models, Psychological; Neurons; Photic Stimulation - methods; Physiological aspects; Rats; Rats, Wistar; Reaction Time - physiology; Reward; Signal Detection, Psychological - physiology; Space Perception - physiology; Thalamus - physiology; Visual Pathways - physiology; Japan
• DOI: 10.1038/nn1528
• ISSN: 1097-6256

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.