Thalamocortical contributions to working memory processes during the n-back task

Thalamocortical contributions to hierarchical cognitive control

“…While the basal ganglia’s response to hierarchical task-switching was found to be similar to that of the thalamus, its ability to predict cortical activity patterns was significantly weaker than the thalamocortical model. Our previous work also observed a better performance for the thalamocortical model when compared to the BG-cortical model in predicting the cortical activity related to a working memory task (Chen et al, 2023) and cognitive tasks across multiple behavioral domains (Hwang et al, 2022). These results suggested that the thalamus has a more direct impact on cortical activity pattern than BG in predicting the hierarchical task representations.…”

“…Specifically, the anterior, medial, and posterior thalamus exhibit strong converging connectivity with multiple frontal-parietal systems that have been implicated in control-related functions (Hwang et al, 2017). The behavioral significance of this thalamocortical connectivity profile is further affirmed by recent functional neuroimaging studies (Chen et al, 2023;Hwang et al, 2022) and lesion evidence (Hwang et al, 2021(Hwang et al, , 2022. However, it remains unclear how thalamocortical connectivity supports hierarchical cognitive control.…”

“…Second, we aimed to determine the interaction between thalamic activity and cortical control representations. To accomplish this, we utilized a novel, data-driven, thalamocortical activity flow mapping analysis to test if thalamocortical interactions can predict cortical activity patterns related to cognitive control (Chen et al, 2023; Cole et al, 2016, 2021; Hwang et al, 2021). Third, we decoded the cognitive representations encoded by thalamic activity to determine the hierarchical task representation thalamocortical interactions most strongly contribute to.…”