TY - JOUR T1 - The human thalamus is an integrative hub for functional brain networks JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/056630 SP - 056630 AU - Kai Hwang AU - Maxwell Bertolero AU - William Liu AU - Mark D'Esposito Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/02/056630.abstract N2 - The thalamus is globally connected with distributed cortical regions, yet the functional significance of this extensive thalamocortical connectivity remains largely unknown. By performing graph-theoretic analyses on thalamocortical functional connectivity data collected from human participants, we found that the human thalamus displays network properties capable of integrating multimodal information across diverse cortical functional networks. From a metaanalysis of a large dataset of functional brain imaging experiments, we further found that the thalamus is involved in multiple cognitive functions. Finally, we found that focal thalamic lesions in humans have widespread distal effects, disrupting the modular organization of cortical functional networks. This converging evidence suggests that the human thalamus is a critical hub region that could integrate heteromodal information and maintain the modular structure of cortical functional networks. ER -