During postnatal development, TC neurons located in the VPM and POm nuclei of the thalamus, which are part of the lemniscal and paralemniscal pathways respectively, send their axon to the somatosensory cortex, where they generate a whisker-related topographic map. While lemniscal neurons are activated by whisker contact, the contribution of paralemniscal neurons to perception is less clear. Furthermore, while the morphological changes of whisker-specific patterning of VPM neurons after input deprivation is well known, the input-dependent molecular pathways controlling this process are largely unknown. Therefore, I first investigated functional differences between lemniscal and paralemniscal pathways by manipulating input from the whisker pad in freely moving mice. Secondly, I investigated the input-dependent molecular pathways controlling the development of whisker-specific patterning, using microarray gene expression analysis. Thus, I identified a nociceptive function for paralemniscal pathway in vivo and input-dependent developmental programs of gene expression critical for the whisker-specific patterning of VPM neurons.