László Acsády
Institute of Experimental Medicine, Budapest, Hungary
Research interest
His research has special focus on the role of thalamus in higher order cognitive functions.
Keynote abstract
Exciting thalamus - complexity of glutamatergic signal transfer in the rodent and human thalamus
Thalamus is the almost exclusive source of subcortical glutamatergic information targeting the cortex, the striatum and the cortical amygdala. Thalamus is also an important distributor of top-down cortical information to these brain regions thus it can be regarded as the most significant glutamatergic interface of the forebrain. Both bottom-up and top-down excitatory spike trains undergo a profound transformation at the thalamic level. The details of this transformation are little understood partly due to the unfortunate association of thalamus with the word “relay”. Like in all other brain centers, the outputs of the neurons are not mere copies of the inputs in the thalamus. However, unlike in all other brain centers thalamic signal transformation is highly region specific.
In other brain regions signal transformation follows a similar rule within a given structure since the underlying microcircuits follow canonical organization. Thalamus is “exciting” since it seems to be the only major brain center without canonical organization. The main reason for the variable microcircuits within the thalamus is the unparallelled heterogeneity of its major excitatory inputs.
Within a given nucleus and among different nuclei thalamic neurons display a perplexing heterogeneity in the source and types of their excitatory inputs as well as in the degree of their convergence and in the association with other types of inputs. As a direct result, signal transformation i.e. the integration of these variable afferents, is highly heterogeneous within the thalamus. The functional relevance of this rich computation is still unclear and requires focused research in the future.
