  The information transfer in the thalamus is blocked dynamically during sleep,
in conjunction with the occurence of spindle waves. As the theoretical
understanding of the mechanism remains incomplete, we analyze two modeling
approaches for a recent experiment by Le Masson {\sl et al}. on the
thalamocortical loop. In a first step, we use a conductance-based neuron model
to reproduce the experiment computationally. In a second step, we model the
same system by using an extended Hindmarsh-Rose model, and compare the results
with the conductance-based model. In the framework of both models, we
investigate the influence of inhibitory feedback on the information transfer in
a typical thalamocortical oscillator. We find that our extended Hindmarsh-Rose
neuron model, which is computationally less costly and thus siutable for
large-scale simulations, reproduces the experiment better than the
conductance-based model. Further, in agreement with the experiment of Le Masson
{\sl et al}., inhibitory feedback leads to stable self-sustained oscillations
which mask the incoming input, and thereby reduce the information transfer
significantly.
