Although the neocortex is clearly involved in shaping the ultimate EEG α rhythm signal (Hughes and Crunelli 2005), ever since the early days of EEG research, the thalamus has been suggested as an important site for its generation. However, the first real evidence for this was provided by experiments on dogs in the early 1970s (Lopes da Silva et al. 1973). These showed that naturally occurring α activity in the visual cortex is accompanied by coherent α oscillations in the primary visual thalamus (i.e. the lateral geniculate nucleus, LGN) (Lopes da Silva et al. 1973). Furthermore, because these LGN oscillations sometimes occurred independently of cortical α rhythms, it appeared that the thalamus was able to autonomously produce α activity. Similar results were later obtained in cats, both for an equivalent of the occipital α rhythm in the visual system (Chatila et al. 1992, 1993; Rougeul-Buser and Buser 1997) as well as for an analogue of the somatosensory μ rhythm (Bouyer, et al. 1982, 1983; Rougeul-Buser and Buser 1997). More recently, an abundance of human imaging data has emerged which also
