Reinforcement learning produces long-lasting realignment of layer 1 apical dendrite tuft responses to behaviorally relevant task dimensions, both rewarded and unrewarded.

Associative and non-associative learning mechanisms summate to produce robust and complex conditioned behavior profiles, opening new avenues to in-depth investigations of defensive responses and threat evaluation.

Salient or behaviorally relevant stimuli, regardless of their modality, robustly activate both higher-order somatosensory and visual thalamic nuclei.