Objective To investigate the temporal response property of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN).Methods Extracelluary recording was made in the TRN auditory sector and medial geniculate body (MGB) while the noise burst was presented to the rat with interstimuli interval (ISI) from 200 ms to 30s.Results The neuronal responses to the repeated auditory stimuli and electrical stimulation were examined on 95 neurons in the auditory sector of the thalamic reticular nucleus and 21 medial geniculate neurons from anesthetized rats.The TRN neurons showed strong response to the first trial and weak response to the subsequent trials of the repeated auditory stimuli,when the inter-stimulus interval was short (<3 s).They responded in the second trial with a firing and sustaining of oscillation similar to that in the first trial,when the ISI was increased to 7 s or even longer.