The lateral nucleus is the major recipient of input from sensory cortices (cortical brain regions that represent information about sensory stimuli) of all modalities (e.g., vision, hearing).
In support of this possibility, recent work has emphasised the critical role of dopaminergic neurons within the SNc, a recipient of input from a subset of medium spiny neurons (MSNs) within striosomes [95], [96], [105], in reinforcement learning and reward prediction [106]–[106].
The 'ventral domain' appears to be critical for learning flexible behaviours for exploration and foraging, as it is the recipient of converging inputs from amygdala, hippocampal formation and prefrontal cortex, putatively centres for stimulus evaluation, spatial navigation, and planning/contingency, respectively.
According to our estimate, L6 is the main recipient of external inputs (Table 3) primarily based, however, on indirect evidence of missing asymmetric synapses.
Taken together, these results indicate that the ventral stream is not just a recipient of motion inputs from motion sensitive regions, but is likely an active and critical player in supporting motion perception.
The MeA is the primary recipient of AOB inputs, it projects to distinct nuclei of the hypothalamus involved in social and defensive responses (Petrovich et al., 2001; Choi et al., 2005; Lin et al., 2011) and disruptions in MeA signaling cause profound deficits in social and predator recognition (Ferguson et al., 2001; Li et al., 2004).
The inferior pulvinar of the monkey is known to be both a recipient of SC input as well as a source of projections to area MT [96], [97], [98].
This neuron type is thought to be the main recipient of sensory input to a column in somatosensory cortex (Armstrong-James et al. 1992; Douglas and Martin 2004).
Layer 4 is the primary recipient of sensory input from the thalamus (Liao and Lee 2012) and most thalamic relay neurons receive feedback from layer 6 of the same cortical column they innervate (Lam and Sherman 2010).
The frontal cortex is a major recipient of dopaminergic input (Berger, Trottier, Verney, Gaspar, & Alvarez, 1988; Williams & Goldman-Rakic, 1998), and several studies have shown that neurons in PFC, especially within ACC, encode a type of reward prediction error signal, although not necessarily qualitatively identical to the signal evident in dopamine neurons.
