Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Cognitive Control Collaborative, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Psychiatry, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States
Brain and Mind Center, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Joel Bruss
Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Neurology, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Pediatrics, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States
Daniel Tranel
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Neurology, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States
Aaron Boes
Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Psychiatry, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Neurology, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States; Department of Pediatrics, The University of Iowa & The University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, United States
Hubs in the human brain support behaviors that arise from brain network interactions. Previous studies have identified hub regions in the human thalamus that are connected with multiple functional networks. However, the behavioral significance of thalamic hubs has yet to be established. Our framework predicts that thalamic subregions with strong hub properties are broadly involved in functions across multiple cognitive domains. To test this prediction, we studied human patients with focal thalamic lesions in conjunction with network analyses of the human thalamocortical functional connectome. In support of our prediction, lesions to thalamic subregions with stronger hub properties were associated with widespread deficits in executive, language, and memory functions, whereas lesions to thalamic subregions with weaker hub properties were associated with more limited deficits. These results highlight how a large-scale network model can broaden our understanding of thalamic function for human cognition.
