Zhou Kuikui, Zhu Lin, Hou Guoqiang, Chen Xueyu, Chen Bo, Yang Chuanzhong, Zhu Yingjie
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Drug Addiction, CAS Key Laboratory of Brain Connectome and Manipulation, The Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute (BCBDI), Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science-Shenzhen Fundamental Research Institutions, Shenzhen, China.
Department of Neonatology, Shenzhen Maternity & Child Healthcare Hospital, The First School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Shenzhen, China.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2021 Feb 16;15:634618. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634618. eCollection 2021.
The brain continuously receives diverse information about the external environment and changes in the homeostatic state. The attribution of salience determines which stimuli capture attention and, therefore, plays an essential role in regulating emotions and guiding behaviors. Although the thalamus is included in the salience network, the neural mechanism of how the thalamus contributes to salience processing remains elusive. In this mini-review, we will focus on recent advances in understanding the specific roles of distinct thalamic nuclei in salience processing. We will summarize the functional connections between thalamus nuclei and other key nodes in the salience network. We will highlight the convergence of neural circuits involved in reward and pain processing, arousal, and attention control in thalamic structures. We will discuss how thalamic activities represent salience information in associative learning and how thalamic neurons modulate adaptive behaviors. Lastly, we will review recent studies which investigate the contribution of thalamic dysfunction to aberrant salience processing in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as drug addiction, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and schizophrenia. Based on emerging evidence from both human and rodent research, we propose that the thalamus, different from previous studies that as an information relay, has a broader role in coordinating the cognitive process and regulating emotions.
大脑持续接收有关外部环境和内稳态状态变化的各种信息。显著性归因决定了哪些刺激会吸引注意力，因此在调节情绪和指导行为方面起着至关重要的作用。尽管丘脑包含在显著性网络中，但丘脑如何促进显著性处理的神经机制仍不清楚。在这篇小型综述中，我们将重点关注在理解不同丘脑核团在显著性处理中的具体作用方面的最新进展。我们将总结丘脑核团与显著性网络中其他关键节点之间的功能连接。我们将强调丘脑结构中涉及奖励和疼痛处理、觉醒及注意力控制的神经回路的汇聚。我们将讨论丘脑活动在联想学习中如何表征显著性信息以及丘脑神经元如何调节适应性行为。最后，我们将回顾最近的研究，这些研究调查了丘脑功能障碍对神经精神疾病（如药物成瘾、创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）和精神分裂症）中异常显著性处理的影响。基于来自人类和啮齿动物研究的新证据，我们提出，与以往将丘脑视为信息中继的研究不同，丘脑在协调认知过程和调节情绪方面具有更广泛的作用。
