Central post-stroke pain of thalamic origin is an extremely distressing and often refractory disorder. There are no well-established predictors for pain development after thalamic stroke, and the role of different thalamic nuclei is unclear. Here, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging to identify the thalamic nuclei, specifically implicated in the generation of central post-stroke pain ...

The pathway from cortical layer 6 to the thalamus is a property of all thalamic relay nuclei. This pathway, as a population, directly excites relay cells and indirectly inhibits them via the thalamic reticular nucleus. To understand the circuit organization of this cortical feedback, we used laser-scanning photostimulation, which specifically activates somata or dendrites, to stimulate the prim...

Objective To determine whether the convergences of tactile information also occur at thalamic ventroposterolateral nucleus in rats, we investigated the properties of tactile responses of the thalamic ventroposterolateral nucleus in rats. Methods Unit responses were recorded extracellularly from thalamic ventroposterolateral nucleus in anesthetized rats. Results Among 156 neurons examined, 140 n...

Microelectrode recording in the thalamus of pigeons subjected to tilt and sinusoidal rotational stimuli around the vertical, longitudinal and transversal axes revealed vestibularly driven units in two thalamic nuclei, the nucleus posteroventralis and the nucleus principalis precommissuralis. Many of these units responded in a complex manner suggesting that inputs from contralateral and ipsilate...

The ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus is an established surgical target for stereotactic ablation and deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of tremor in Parkinson's disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET). It is centrally placed on a cerebello-thalamo-cortical network connecting the primary motor cortex, to the dentate nucleus of the contralateral cerebellum through the ...

The thalamic reticular nucleus is a thin layer of GABAergic cells located between the external medullary lamina and the internal capsule surrounding the rostolateral surface of the thalamus. It has functionally distinct afferent and efferent connections with thalamic nuclei, the neocortex, the basal forebrain and the brainstem. Parvalbumin is a calcium-binding protein, which is regarded to be a...

In mammals, the retinogeniculocortical pathway is the primary afferent route to visual cortex. The flow of information along this pathway can be modulated at the thalamic level (i.e., at the lateral geniculate nucleus) as a function of arousal, attention, and phenomena such as eye movements. Physiological studies indicate that an important source of this state-dependent influence on geniculate ...

By utilizing new information from both clinical and experimental (lesion, electrophysiological, and gene-activation) studies with animals, the anatomy underlying anterograde amnesia has been reformulated. The distinction between temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia is of limited value in that a common feature of anterograde amnesia is damage to part of an "extended hippocampal system" compris...

The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) is a thin layer of GABAergic cells lying rostral and lateral to the dorsal thalamus, and its projection to thalamic relay cells (i.e., the reticulothalamic pathway) strongly inhibits these cells. In an attempt to extend earlier studies of reticulothalamic connections to sensory thalamic nuclei, we used laser-scanning photostimulation to study the reticulotha...

Previous studies have identified an afterdepolarization (ADP) in thalamocortical neurons that is mediated by an upregulation of the hyperpolarization-activated current I(h). This ADP has been suggested to play a key role in the generation of spindle oscillations. In the lateral geniculate nucleus, upregulation of I(h) has been shown to be signaled by a rise in intracellular calcium leading to t...