Objective: To improve current understanding of the mechanisms behind thalamic amnesia, as it is unclear whether it is directly related to damage to specific nuclei, in particular to the anterior or mediodorsal nuclei, or indirectly related to lesions of the mammillothalamic tract (MTT). Methods: We recruited 12 patients with a left thalamic infarction and 25 healthy matched controls. All underw...

Afferent subcortical connections to the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the dog were investigated using the horseradish peroxidase retrograde transport method. The dorsal and ventral regions of the medial PFC receive different projections both from the mediodorsal and the ventral thalamic nuclei. The dorsomedial PFC receives projection from a dorsolateral region of the "parvocellular" MD subd...

A few studies have been performed in primate basal ganglia-thalamo-prefrontal pathways. Nevertheless, their electrophysiological properties and anatomical arrangements remain obscure. This study examined them in nigro-thalamo-cortical pathways from the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) to the frontal cortex (FRC) via the mediodorsal (MD) and ventral anterior (VA) thalamus in monkeys. First...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Recent neuropathologic research suggests thalamic involvement in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), which has been disregarded in imaging studies. Diffusion-weighted (DW) MR imaging has the highest sensitivity for the detection of signal intensity (SI) abnormalities in CJD. We hypothesized that pathologic changes in the thalamus in sCJD can be detected by using a ...

V. Di Lazzaro, MD; F. Pilato, MD; E. Saturno, MD; M. Dileone, MD; P.A. Tonali, MD; M. Antonelli, MD; M.A. Pennisi, MD; G. Bello, MD; and P. Brown, MD, Rome, Italy, and London, U.K. A 44-year-old man with a history of hypertension had an acute myocardial infarction and cardiac arrest followed by persistent deep coma. On day 4, he developed continuous, rapid, large proximal movements of the four ...

The mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (MDT) is a higher order thalamic nucleus and its role in cognition is increasingly well established. Interestingly, components of the MDT also have a somewhat unique sensory function as they link primary olfactory cortex to orbitofrontal associative cortex. In fact, anatomical evidence firmly demonstrates that the MDT receives direct input from primary olfactory...

Alterations in the function of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and its major thalamic source of innervation, the mediodorsal (MD) thalamus, have been hypothesized to contribute to the symptoms of schizophrenia. The NMDAR antagonist ketamine, used to model schizophrenia, elicits a brain state resembling early stage schizophrenia characterized by cognitive deficits and increases in cortical l...

In spite of the considerable progress in clinical and molecular research, knowledge regarding brain damage in spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2) and type 3 (SCA3) still is limited and the extent to which the thalamus is involved in both diseases is uncertain. Accordingly, we performed a pathoanatomical analysis on serial thick sections stained for lipofuscin granules and Nissl substance throu...