Publications

The claustrum, a thin strip of neurons located medially to the insula, is as intriguing as it is understudied. With a particularly dense reciprocal connectivity with large swaths of cortex (1), and a plethora of neuromodulatory inputs, the claustrum has been the object of a number of hypotheses regarding its functions. These hypotheses include a role for the claustrum in integration of sensory information to create a unified conscious experience (2), cortical synchronization (3), modulation of cortical functional networks (4), saliency detection (5, 6), active sensing (7), and segregation of attention (8, 9). Interestingly, all these hypotheses revolve around a common theme, that of enabling the formation of an accurate and cohesive representation of the world around us