Preface Michael M. Halassa; Part I. History: 1. A brief history of the thalamus Francisco Clasca; Part II. Anatomy: 2. Organization of thalamic inputs Laszlo Acsady; 3. Thalamic output pathways Francisco Clasca; 4. Thalamocortical circuitry matters Murray Sherman; Part III. Evolution: 5. Morphological, developmental and functional evolution of the thalamus Ann Butler; 6. Lamprey thalamus and beyond Shreyas Suryanarayanan, Brita Robertson, Sten Grillner; Part IV. Development: 7. Development of the thalamocortical systems Sara Bandiera, Zoltan Molnar; 8. Ontogeny of thalamic GABAergic neurons Alessio Delogu; Part V. Sensory processing: 9. Thalamocortical interactions in primary visual cortex Jose-Manuel Alonso, Massimo Scanziani; 10. Corticothalamic feedback in vision W. Marty Usrey; 11. The vibrissa sensorimotor system of rodents: A view from the sensory thalamus Martin Deschenes, David Kleinfeld; 12. Corticothalamic pathways in the somatosensory system Alexander Groh, Rebecca Mease; 13. Thalamocortical circuits for auditory processing, plasticity and perception Daniel Polley, Anne Takesian; Part VI. Motor Control: 14. Motor thalamic interactions with brainstem and basal ganglia Jesse Goldberg; 15. Thalamic-cerebellar interactions Freek Hoebeek, Henk-Jan Boele; Part VII. Cognition: 16. The thalamus in cognitive control Kai Hwang, Mark D'Esposito; 17. The thalamus in attention Sabine Kastner, Michael Arcaro; 18. The thalamus in navigation Adrien Peyrache; Part VIII. Arousal: 19. Thalamus and sleep Mattia Aime, Antoine R. Adamantidis; 20. Central thalamic contributions to arousal regulation Nicholas Schiff; Part IX. Computation: 21. A dynamical systems perspective on thalamic circuit function Qinlong Gu, John Murray; 22. Computational contributions of the thalamus to learning and memory Randall O'Reilly, Thomas Hazy.