Click Here to Read: Princeton study reveals the brain’s mysterious switchboard operator by Morgan Kelly on the Princeton University website on August 17, 2012.

Princeton University researchers have found that the pulvinar, a mysterious region deep in the human brain, acts like a switchboard operator to make sure that separate areas of the brain are communicating about the same external information most important to our behavior at a given moment. The pulvinar uses electrical impulses to synchronize and allow more effective communication between brain cells in the visual cortex, which processes visual information. The researchers produced neural connection maps that show the pulvinar’s connection to these brain regions. In this scan, the pulvinar communicates with the occipital lobe (yellow) and the temporal lobe (red) individually, and with both (green). Image courtesy of Science/AAAS