SCSB Lunch Series with Dr. Lace Riggs: Anteromedial thalamocortical communication: Unexpected roles in affective cognition

Date: Friday, October 11,  2024
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location: Simons Center Conference room 46-6011 + Zoom [https://mit.zoom.us/j/98067736560]

Speaker: Lace Riggs, Ph.D.
Affiliation: Simons Postdoctoral Fellow,  Guoping Feng Lab, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Talk title: Anteromedial thalamocortical communication: Unexpected roles in affective cognition

Abstract: Thalamocortical circuit dysfunction is implicated in the pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental conditions like autism. However, an outstanding question is how the thalamus regulates complex emotional and cognitive processes through its extensive corticolimbic projections. In this talk, I will show how the anteromedial nucleus of the thalamus (AM) can serve as a model substrate to understand the role of higher order thalamocortical circuits in both health and disease. While the function of AM is largely unknown, it is the major thalamic projection to the cingulate cortex, which is a subregion of the prefrontal cortex that is highly implicated in the social, emotional, and cognitive aspects of autism. I find that AM constrains cingulate activity through strong disynaptic feedforward inhibition and can dynamically shift cingulate activity toward hyperexcitability in response to aversive stimuli, altering the course of conflict-based decision-making. By forming reciprocal monosynaptic connections exclusively with the cingulate cortex, AM is able to serve a unique role in regulating affective cognition. Ongoing studies aim to provide novel insight into how affective states govern higher-order cognitive processes by examining cell-type specific mechanisms of thalamocortical dysfunction in preclinical models of autism.