The primate claustrum as a hub for precision weighting of prediction errors across the cortical hierarchy

Understanding how signals are exchanged across the cerebral cortex is a central challenge for theories of perception and cognition. Although crucial gaps exist in empirical knowledge, evidence is emerging in macaques for complementary functional roles of cortico-cortical and cortico-claustral-cortical loops in predictive coding and perceptual inference. This Essay puts forward a roadmap for investigating these cortical networks in the primate brain by integrating parallel neuroimaging investigation in humans with invasive electrophysiology and tracing experiments in macaques. It proposes that there are several anatomical features of the claustrum that suggest it promotes signal integration, including precision-weighting across the primate cortical hierarchy, which merits further investigation.