{"doi":"10.17615/hn5k-rm82","title":"Inhibition of Mediodorsal Thalamus Disrupts Thalamofrontal Connectivity and Cognition","abstract":"Cognitive deficits are central to schizophrenia but the underlying mechanisms still remain unclear. Imaging studies performed in patients point to decreased activity in the medio-dorsal thalamus (MD) and reduced functional connectivity between the MD and prefrontal cortex (PFC) as candidate mechanisms. However, a causal link is still missing. We used a pharmacogenetic approach in mice to diminish MD neuron activity and examined the behavioral and physiological consequences. We found that a subtle decrease in MD activity is sufficient to trigger selective impairments in prefrontal-dependent cognitive tasks. In vivo recordings in behaving animals revealed that MD-PFC beta-range synchrony is enhanced during acquisition and performance of a working memory task. Decreasing MD activity interfered with this task-dependent modulation of MD-PFC synchrony, which correlated with impaired working memory. These findings suggest that altered MD activity is sufficient to disrupt prefrontal-dependent cognitive behaviors, and could contribute to the cognitive symptoms observed in schizophrenia.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":112737,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.952,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":225473,"name":"Bryan L. Roth","orcid":"0000-0002-0561-6520","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533966,"name":"Scott S. Bolkan","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533178,"name":"Ryan D. Ward","orcid":"0000-0003-1036-0555","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311370,"name":"Christoph Kellendonk","orcid":"0000-0003-3302-2188","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533179,"name":"Peter D. Balsam","orcid":"0000-0001-7581-5499","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533180,"name":"Joshua A. Gordon","orcid":"0000-0002-5488-8266","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533181,"name":"Pia-Kelsey O’Neill","orcid":"0000-0003-3349-2024","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289814,"name":"Atheir I. Abbas","orcid":"0000-0002-7080-3509","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533177,"name":"Sébastien Parnaudeau","orcid":"0000-0003-1916-5553","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:17.845093Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}