Processing of analogy in the thalamocortical circuit

The corticothalamic feedback and the thalamic reticular nucleus have gained much attention lately because of their integrative and modulatory functions. A previous study by the author suggested that this circuitry could process analogies (i.e., the analogy hypothesis). In this paper, the proposed model was implemented as a network of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons to test the analogy hypothesis. The previous proposal required specific delay and temporal dynamics, and the implemented network tuned accordingly functioned as predicted. Furthermore, these specific conditions turn out to be consistent with experimental data, suggesting that a further investigation of the thalamocortical circuit within the analogical framework may be worthwhile.