Functional Role of Pulvinar In the Sustained Attention

Abstract

Sustained attention is important for survival in a challenging environment. Oscillatory activities in the pulvinar have been reported to correlate with sustained attention. However, whether pulvinar can causally establish and maintain sustained attention is elusive. To address this question, in this study, we opto-genetically activated pulvinar neurons during delay period in the five-choice serial reaction time task and measured the behavioral outputs. We found that pulvinar firing rates were significantly increased after optogenetic stimulation. Also, in the behavioral test, the correct rates were remarkably increased with decreased omission rates, but the reaction time and reward retrieval time remained the same. Together, these results deepen our understanding of the functional role of pulvinar in sustained attention.