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Response properties of 252 single-units to visual, auditory, somatosensory and noxious stimulation were recorded by means of extracellular microelectrodes in the suprageniculate nucleus of anaesthetized, immobilized cats. Of the 141 units tested for modality properties the majority (n=113, 80.1%) was found unimodal in the sense that stimuli of exclusively one sensory modality were able to elicit an activation of the unit. Twenty-four (17.0%) cells were bimodal and four (2.8%) were trimodal (visual, somatosensory and auditory). The visual modality dominated the unimodal cells (n=74, 65.5%), while cells responsive to somatic stimulation (n=20, 17.6%), auditory stimulation (n=16, 14.1%) or noxious stimulation of the tooth pulp (n=3, 2.6%) were less frequently encountered. Visual sensitivity dominated the multisensory cells, too. The visually responsive units were characterized by having a sensitivity to stimuli moving …