Sensory History Drives Adaptive Neural Geometry in LP/Pulvinar-Prefrontal Cortex Circuits.

Prior expectations guide attention and support perceptual filtering for efficient processing during decision-making. Here we show that during a visual discrimination task, mice adaptively use prior stimulus history to guide ongoing choices by estimating differences in evidence between consecutive trials (| Δ Dir |). The thalamic lateral posterior (LP)/pulvinar nucleus provides robust inputs to the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), which has been implicated in selective attention and predictive processing, but the function of the LP-ACC projection is unknown.

Brain-wide mapping of inputs to the mouse lateral posterior (LP/Pulvinar) thalamus-anterior cingulate cortex network.

The rodent homolog of the primate pulvinar, the lateral posterior (LP) thalamus, is extensively interconnected with multiple cortical areas. While these cortical interactions can span the entire LP, subdivisions of the LP are characterized by differential connections with specific cortical regions. In particular, the medial LP has reciprocal connections with frontoparietal cortical areas, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).