PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kai Hwang
AU  - Maxwell Bertolero
AU  - William Liu
AU  - Mark D’Esposito
TI  - The Human Thalamus is an Integrative Hub for Functional Brain Networks
AID  - 10.1101/056630
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 056630
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/22/056630.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/22/056630.full
AB  - 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 meta-analysis 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.