Our ability to pay attention, plan, and troubleshoot involve cognitive processing by the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The balance of activity among excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the cortex, based on local neural circuits and distant inputs, is key to these cognitive functions. A recent study from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT shows that excitatory inputs from the thalamus activate a local inhibitory circuit in the prefrontal cortex, revealing new insights into how these cognitive circuits may be controlled. “For the field, systematic identification of these circuits is…
