Time to put the mammillothalamic pathway into context

The medial diencephalon, in particular the mammillary bodies and anterior thalamic nuclei, has long been linked to memory amnesia. provide a dense input into via mammillothalamic tract. In both animal models, patients, lesions of bodies, tract nuclei all produce severe impairments temporal contextual memory, yet it is uncertain why these regions are critical. Mounting evidence from electrophysiological neural imaging studies suggests that projections exercise considerable distal influence over thalamo-cortical hippocampo-cortical interactions. Here, we outline how damage body-anterior axis, patients disrupts behavioural performance on tasks relate (“where”) (“when”) processing. Focusing as possible ‘theta-generator’ (through their interconnections with ventral tegmental nucleus Gudden) discuss pathway may contribute mechanisms which hippocampus neocortex encode representations experience.