Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

MINI REVIEW article

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

Sec. Motivation and Reward

Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1645035

This article is part of the Research TopicDorsal, ventral, and posterior subregions of the striatum: parallel, integrating, or competing functionsView all articles

Anatomical pathways and functional implications of the rodent auditory system basal ganglia interconnectivity

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
  • 2Kumamoto University Hospital, Kumamoto, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Sound influences motor functions and sound perception is conversely modulated by locomotion. Accumulating evidence supports an interconnection between the auditory system and the basal ganglia (BG), which has functional implications on the interaction between the two systems. Substantial evidence now supports auditory cortex and auditory thalamus inputs to the tri-laminar region of the tail of the striatum (tTS) in rodents. Thalamic input modulates the response gain of striatal neurons, whereas cortical input shapes their frequency tuning. Only recently has our understanding of BG projections to the auditory system advanced. GABAergic neurons in the tTS, which receive input from the auditory cortex, project to the posterior globus pallidus external segment (GPe).Posterior GPe, in turn, sends strong GABAergic projections to the non-lemniscal auditory thalamus (NLAT) and moderate projections to the cuneiform nucleus (CnF). The BG and auditory system are thus interconnected at multiple levels, forming a loop circuit in which the auditory system projects to the striatum and receives BG output via the NLAT. This circuit may mediate BG influence on auditory processing; however, the absence of motor cortex input to the tTS raises questions about its role in movement-related modulation of auditory responses.Given that the NLAT serves as a neural substrate for sound-cued aversive associative learning, BG output to the NLAT may influence learning processes.The pathway connecting the auditory system and CnF via the BG may underlie rhythmic entrainment in healthy individuals and therapeutic effects of rhythmic cues on gait in Parkinson's disease.

Keywords: Auditory Cortex, auditory thalamus, lemniscal, non-lemniscal, Tail of striatum, tri-laminar tail of striatum, posterior globus pallidus, Cuneiform nucleus

Received: 11 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tomioka, Takemoto and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Wen-Jie Song, Kumamoto University Hospital, Kumamoto, Japan

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.