Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CerCo), CNRS UMR 5549, Université de Toulouse, UPS, Toulouse, France.
INSERM, CHU Purpan - BP 3028 - 31024 Toulouse Cedex 3, France.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Apr 4;33(8):4202-4215. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac337.
The pulvinar is a heterogeneous thalamic nucleus, which is well developed in primates. One of its subdivisions, the medial pulvinar, is connected to many cortical areas, including the visual, auditory, and somatosensory cortices, as well as with multisensory areas and premotor areas. However, except for the visual modality, little is known about its sensory functions. A hypothesis is that, as a region of convergence of information from different sensory modalities, the medial pulvinar plays a role in multisensory integration. To test this hypothesis, 2 macaque monkeys were trained to a fixation task and the responses of single-units to visual, auditory, and auditory-visual stimuli were examined. Analysis revealed auditory, visual, and multisensory neurons in the medial pulvinar. It also revealed multisensory integration in this structure, mainly suppressive (the audiovisual response is less than the strongest unisensory response) and subadditive (the audiovisual response is less than the sum of the auditory and the visual responses). These findings suggest that the medial pulvinar is involved in multisensory integration.
丘脑枕是一个异质的丘脑核团，在灵长类动物中高度发达。其一个分支，即内侧丘脑枕，与许多皮层区域相连，包括视觉、听觉和体感皮层，以及多感觉区域和运动前区。然而，除了视觉模态外，人们对其感觉功能知之甚少。有一种假设是，作为来自不同感觉模态的信息汇聚区域，内侧丘脑枕在多感觉整合中起作用。为了验证这一假设，对 2 只猕猴进行了固定任务训练，并检测了单个神经元对视觉、听觉和视听刺激的反应。分析显示在内侧丘脑枕中有听觉、视觉和多感觉神经元。它还揭示了该结构中的多感觉整合，主要是抑制（视听反应小于最强的单感觉反应）和次加性（视听反应小于听觉和视觉反应的总和）。这些发现表明内侧丘脑枕参与了多感觉整合。
