Cover legend: NMDA spike/plateau potentials can be elicited locally in distal dendrites of thalamocortical neurons (two-photon reconstruction, color encodes depth) in dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus. Through these dendritic potentials, cortical feedback can regulate the flow of visual information by shifting the functional firing mode of thalamocortical neurons from burst to tonic and by facilitating retinal signal transmission in tonic mode. For more information, see the article by Augustinaite et al. (pages 10892–10905).