Definition
The thalamus is a pacemaker for several types of brain oscillations, such as sleep spindles. Although these oscillations are generated within thalamic circuits, their triggering and large-scale synchrony depends on cerebral cortex. In particular, it depends on the descending excitatory action of the cortex on the thalamus. Computational models show that the inhibitory-dominant character of this “corticothalamic feedback” can explain the large-scale synchrony of oscillations in cerebral cortex.
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Introduction
The fact that the brain produces oscillations was discovered as soon as electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings of brain activity were available. The first human EEG recordings reported oscillations, which type, frequency, and amplitude highly depend on behavioral state (reviewed in Steriade 2003). In an alert, awake subject, the EEG is dominated by low-amplitude fast activity (“desynchronized EEG”) with high-frequency oscillations (beta, gamma),...
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References
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Further Reading
Steriade M, Jones EG, McCormick DA (eds) (1997) Thalamus, vol 2. Elsevier, Amsterdam/Holland
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Destexhe, A. (2014). Corticothalamic Feedback: Large-Scale Synchrony. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_18-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_18-1
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