The cognitive thalamus

The thalamus, once viewed as passively relaying sensory information to the cerebral cortex, is becoming increasingly acknowledged as actively regulating the information transmitted to corti-cal areas. There are a number of reasons for this change. First, evidence suggests that first-order thalamic areas, like the lateral geniculate nucleus, ventral division of the medial geniculate nucleus, and the ventral posterior nuclei, can modulate neural processing along the sensory pathways to the cortex according to behavioral context (O'Connor et al., 2002; McAlonan et al., 2008). Second, much of the thalamus receives relatively little input from the sensory periphery, instead receiving its major driving input from the cortex. This higher-order thalamus forms pathways between cor-tical areas, which can strongly influence cortical activity (Theyel et al., 2010; Purushothaman et al., 2012; Saalmann et al., 2012). Third, lesions to higher-order thalamic areas, such as the pulvinar and mediodorsal nucleus, can produce severe attention and memory deficits suggesting an important role for the thalamus in cognition. In this Research Topic, we bring together neuroscientists who study different parts of the thala-mus, particularly the higher-order thalamic nuclei, to highlight thalamic contributions to learning These studies incorporate a range of methods, from molecular to systems-level approaches, and connect rodent, non-human primate and human data, for a better understanding of human cognition. The first three articles focus on movement monitoring and motor control. Based on lesion data from clinical subjects, Ostendorf et al. (2013) show that the central thalamus makes an important contribution to predicting the perceptual consequences of eye movements. Focusing on cerebello-cortical pathways incorporating the central and ventral lateral thalamus, Prevosto and Sommer (2013) review evidence for thalamic modulation of movement processing based on cognitive requirements. Encompassing a number of thalamic nuclei, including the pulvinar, mediodorsal and ventral intermediate nuclei, Klostermann et al. (2013) discuss contributions of the thalamus and basal ganglia to language perception and production. The Research Topic continues on the theme of behavioral flexibility. Minamimoto et al. (2014) show that that the macaque centromedian nucleus, in the intralaminar thalamus, plays a role in counteracting behavioral biases, which contributes to flexible behavior via interactions with the basal ganglia. Bradfield et al. (2013) review evidence from rodent studies that another intralaminar thalamic nucleus, the parafascicular thalamus, also contributes to behavioral flexibility , whereas the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus plays a key role in acquiring goal-directed behavior. Next, the focus shifts to memory processes. Jankowski et al. (2013) review …