Figure 3.

(A) Proposed claustrum circuitry involved in stimulus encoding. Neural activity encoding a novel/salient sensory stimulus in sensorimotor and/or association cortices activates the corresponding subdivision of the contralateral claustrum (Step 1). If the sensory stimulus is salient enough to pass the claustral filter, the ipsilateral cingulate cortex receives and processes the incoming claustral signal (Step 2). (B) Proposed circuitry involved in an action response to a salient stimulus. The cingulate cortex signals to the appropriate subdivision of the contralateral claustrum (Step 3) that, in turn, provides attentional allocation to the original sensorimotor/association cortex encoding the salient stimulus (Step 4). The activated sensorimotor/association cortex finally signals to the striatal complex for selection of an appropriate action (Step 5).