Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that profoundly perturbs cognitive processing. Despite the success in treating many of its symptoms, the field lacks effective methods to measure and address its impact on reasoning, inference, and decision making. Prefrontal cortical abnormalities have been well documented in schizophrenia, but additional dysfunction in the interactions between the prefrontal cortex and thalamus have recently been described. This dysfunction may be interpreted in light of parallel advances in neural circuit research based on nonhuman animals, which show critical thalamic roles in maintaining and switching prefrontal activity patterns in various cognitive tasks. Here, we review this basic literature and connect it to emerging innovations in clinical research. We highlight the value of focusing on associative thalamic structures not only to better understand the very nature of cognitive processing but also to leverage these circuits for diagnostic and therapeutic development in schizophrenia. We suggest that the time is right for building close bridges between basic thalamic research and its clinical translation, particularly in the domain of cognition and schizophrenia.

精神分裂症是一种严重扰乱认知过程的脑部疾病。尽管在治疗其许多症状方面取得了成功，但该领域缺乏有效的方法来衡量和解决其对推理、推理和决策的影响。前额皮质异常在精神分裂症中得到了很好的证明，但最近描述了前额皮质和丘脑之间相互作用的额外功能障碍。这种功能障碍可以根据基于非人类动物的神经回路研究的平行进展来解释，这些研究显示出在各种认知任务中维持和转换前额叶活动模式的关键丘脑作用。在这里，我们回顾了这些基础文献，并将其与临床研究中的新兴创新联系起来。我们强调关注关联丘脑结构的价值，不仅可以更好地理解认知处理的本质，还可以利用这些电路进行精神分裂症的诊断和治疗发展。我们建议现在是时候在基础丘脑研究与其临床转化之间建立密切的桥梁，特别是在认知和精神分裂症领域。