ArticleNature neuroscience2018
Thalamic regulation of switching between cortical representations enables cognitive flexibility.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 156 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
156 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 319 citations in OpenAlex.
- Intervention effect of a single exercise session on executive function in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a three-level meta-analysis.BMC pediatrics · 2025Pooled it
- Effects of Exercise Training on Executive Functioning in Adults with Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2023Pooled it
- Preoperative thalamus volume is not associated with preoperative cognitive impairment (preCI) or postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD).Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Synaptic plasticity of prefrontal long-range inhibition regulates cognitive flexibility.Neuron · 2026Article
- Neural dynamics underlying minute-timescale persistent behaviour in the human brain.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Neuroinflammation-associated thalamocortical functional connectivity and cognition in older adults.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2026Article
- Thalamocortical orchestration of human theory of mind.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Distinct neural oscillations predict individual differences in feedback-guided cognitive flexibility.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Psilocybin selectively rescues cognitive flexibility impairments caused by aberrant prefrontal error signaling.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Nucleus-level thalamic organization anchors multimodal signatures of thalamocortical maturation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Early life stress induces brain-wide electrical network predisposition to migraine.The journal of headache and pain · 2026Article
- Hierarchical Reconfiguration of Neurocognitive Task Set Representations Mediates Cognitive Flexibility.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Electrophysiological Brain Connectivity and Subjective States Evoked by Electrical Stimulation of the Human Mid-thalamus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Prefrontal modulation of striatal engagement: a hierarchical framework for goal-directed behavior.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Reduced mediodorsal thalamus activity underlies aberrant belief dynamics in a genetic mouse model of schizophrenia.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- The role of transthalamic pathways in perception.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Thalamocortical regulation of prefrontal stability enables abstract rule generalization.Science advances · 2026Article
- A neural mechanism for online discovery of latent contexts.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Cell-type-specific sustained value representations in the claustrum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Fmr1 knockout disrupts multiple intrinsic properties via reduced HCN channel activity in mediodorsal thalamocortical neurons.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
96 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Interactions between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and mediodorsal thalamus are critical for cognitive flexibility, yet the underlying computations are unknown. To investigate frontothalamic substrates of cognitive flexibility, we developed a behavioral task in which mice switched between different sets of learned cues that guided attention toward either visual or auditory targets. We found that PFC responses reflected both the individual cues and their meaning as task rules, indicating a hierarchical cue-to-rule transformation. Conversely, mediodorsal thalamus responses reflected the statistical regularity of cue presentation and were required for switching between such experimentally specified cueing contexts. A subset of these thalamic responses sustained context-relevant PFC representations, while another suppressed the context-irrelevant ones. Through modeling and experimental validation, we find that thalamic-mediated suppression may not only reduce PFC representational interference but could also preserve unused cortical traces for future use. Overall, our study provides a computational foundation for thalamic engagement in cognitive flexibility.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.