Lesions of the rodent anterior thalamic nuclei cause severe deficits to multiple spatial learning tasks. Possible explanations for these effects are examined, with particular reference to T-maze alternation. Anterior thalamic lesions not only impair allocentric place learning but also disrupt other spatial processes, including direction learning, path integration, and relative length discrimina...

To test potential parallels between hippocampal and anterior thalamic function, rats with anterior thalamic lesions were trained on a series of biconditional learning tasks. The anterior thalamic lesions did not disrupt learning two biconditional associations in operant chambers where a specific auditory stimulus (tone or click) had a differential outcome depending on whether it was paired with...

The anterior thalamic nuclei form part of a network for episodic memory in humans. The importance of these nuclei for recognition and recency judgments remains, however, unclear. Rats with anterior thalamic nuclei lesions and their controls were tested on object recognition, along with two types of recency judgment. The spontaneous discrimination of a novel object or a novel odor from a familia...

Rats with complete fornix lesions or cytotoxic lesions placed in the anterior thalamic region were trained on an allocentric spatial memory test (the Morris water maze). While both lesions led to impairments in locating the hidden platform in this test of reference memory, the thalamic lesions led to a significantly greater deficit than that observed after fornix transection as measured by a nu...

Recent, convergent evidence places the anterior thalamic nuclei at the heart of diencephalic amnesia. However, the reasons for the severe memory loss in diencephalic amnesia remain unknown. A potential clue comes from the dense, reciprocal connections between the anterior thalamic nuclei and retrosplenial cortex, another region vital for memory. We now report a loss of synaptic plasticity [long...

The effects of cytotoxic lesions in either the anterior thalamic nuclei or the mamillary bodies were compared with those of fornix lesions on a test of spatial working memory. All three lesions impaired acquisition of a forced alternation task in a T-maze, but the disruptive effects of the mamillary body lesions were significantly less than those following either fornix or anterior thalamic dam...

The clinical manifestations of thalamic hemorrhage frequently comprise hemiparesis, hemianesthesia, and oculomotor abnormalities. Since the advent of computed tomography, an amnestic syndrome following thalamic hemorrhage has been recognized, but the thalamic structures involved and the mechanism of amnesia have remained uncertain. We report a patient with sudden memory dysfunction following he...

Abstract We report a case of varicella zoster virus (VZV)-associated anterior uveitis in patient with weight loss, arthritis and signs inflammatory bowel disease. Her clinical course included the development thalamic stroke secondary to VZV cerebral vasculopathy. Following antiviral therapy, patient’s neurologic symptoms recovered her ophthalmic findings improved.

Activity of the immediate early gene c-fos was compared across hemispheres in rats with unilateral anterior thalamic lesions. Fos protein was quantified after rats performed a spatial working memory test in the radial-arm maze, a task that is sensitive to bilateral lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei. Unilateral anterior thalamic lesions produced evidence of a widespread hippocampal hypoact...

This review charts recent advances from a variety of disciplines that create a new perspective on why the multiple hippocampal-anterior thalamic interconnections are together vital for human episodic memory and rodent event memory. Evidence has emerged for the existence of a series of parallel temporal-diencephalic pathways that function in a reciprocal manner, both directly and indirectly, bet...