Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with neuronal loss not only in the hippocampus and amygdala but also in the thalamus. Anterodorsal, centromedial, and pulvinar nuclei are the main sites of degeneration in AD. Here we combined shape analysis and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography to study degeneration in AD in the thalamus and its connections. Structural and diffusion tensor MRI s...

Thalamocortical loops, connecting functionally segregated, higher order cortical regions, and basal ganglia, have been proposed not only for well described motor and sensory regions, but also for limbic and prefrontal areas relevant for affective and cognitive processes. These functions are, however, more specific to humans, rendering most invasive neuroanatomical approaches impossible and inte...

Background & Aims: Thyroid hormones are of great importance in the development of the central nervous system. Congenital hypothyroidism may affect the reorganization of specific and non-specific thalamocortical afferents to whisker–related sensory (wS1) corticol region in rats. Methods: Congenital hypothyroidism was induced by adding propylthiouracil (PTU) (25 ppm) to the rats...

The lateral parafascicular nucleus (lPf) is a member of the intralaminar thalamic nuclei, a collection of nuclei that characteristically provides widespread projections to the neocortex and basal ganglia and is associated with arousal, sensory, and motor functions. Recently, lPf neurons have been shown to possess different characteristics than other cortical-projecting thalamic relay neurons. W...

The rostral intralaminar thalamic nuclei (ILn) are organized to activate pathways originating in medial prefrontal cortex (mPF) that mediate memory-guided responding during alert, wakeful states. Previous studies have shown that rostral ILn or mPF lesions produce deficits in delayed matching to position (DMTP). Here, we manipulated rostral ILn activity in rats by microinjecting drugs or applyin...

Histopathologic changes in the thalamus of 23 rats after somatosensory cortical infarction produced by middle cerebral artery occlusion were examined using the Fink-Heimer silver staining method, immunohistochemistry with antibodies against glial fibrillary acidic protein and laminin, and conventional stains. Middle cerebral artery occlusion produced cortical infarcts in the lateral parietal re...

The striatum is divided into two compartments named the patch (or striosome) and the matrix. Although these two compartments can be differentiated by their neurochemical content or afferent and efferent projections, the synaptology of inputs to these striatal regions remains poorly characterized. By using the vesicular glutamate transporters vGluT1 and vGluT2, as markers of corticostriatal and ...

Spontaneous firing and antidromically or synaptically evoked discharges of 89 single neurons in centralis lateralis-paracentralis (CL-Pc) intralaminar thalamic nuclei were examined during waking and sleep states in behaving cats with chronic pontine lesions. Twenty-four neurons were activated synaptically at short latencies from the midbrain reticular formation (MRF) after anterograde degenerat...

Although the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus are now known to have an organized, extrathalamic projection through the internal capsule (Droogleever Fortuyn, and Stefens, 1951; Nashold, Hanbery, and Olszewski, 1955; Powell and Cowan, 1956), the precise mode of termination of the efferents from these nuclei remains problematical. The experimental evidence bearing upon the projection of these ...