Damage involving the anterior thalamic and adjacent rostral thalamic nuclei may result in a severe anterograde amnesia, similar to the amnesia resulting from damage to the hippocampal formation. Little is known, however, about the information represented in these nuclei. To redress this deficit, we recorded units in three rostral thalamic nuclei in freely-moving rats [the parataenial nucleus (P...

Thalamic chronotaraxis is an isolated disorientation of time caused by the damage of thalamus, especially the mediodorsal nucleus. We performed interval timing trials on a patient with this phenomenon. Based on the results of those trials and compared to the previous reports, thalamic chronotaraxis of our case might be due to the disfunction of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex caused by the r...

This study is concerned with cortico-thalamic neural mechanisms underlying attentional phenomena. Previous results from this laboratory demonstrated that the visual sector of the GABAergic thalamic reticular nucleus is selectively c-fos activated in rats that are naturally paying attention to features of a novel-complex environment, and that this activation is dependent on top-down glutamatergi...

The basal ganglia (BG), which influence cortical activity via the thalamus, play a major role in motor activity, learning and memory, sensory processing, and many aspects of behavior. The substantia nigra (SN) consists of GABAergic neurons of the pars reticulata that inhibit thalamic neurons and provide the primary output of the BG, and dopaminergic neurons of the pars compacta that modulate th...

The thalamic reticular nucleus is a layer of GABAergic neurons that occupy a strategic position between the thalamus and cortex. Here we used laser scanning photostimulation to compare in young mice (9-12 days old) the organization of the reticular inputs to first- and higher-order somatosensory relays, namely, the ventral posterior lateral nucleus and posterior nucleus, respectively. The retic...

Striatal targets related to the dorsal thalamus were studied in reptiles. The lateral striatum projects to globus pallidus and to three cellular groups associated to the lateral forebrain bundle: the anterior entopeduncular nucleus, the suprapeduncular nucleus, and the ventromedial thalamic nucleus. The projection is heavier on the suprapeduncular nucleus, which in turn projects on nucleus rotu...

The thalamic reticular nucleus is a layer of GABAergic neurons that occupy a strategic position between the thalamus and cortex. Here we used laser scanning photostimulation to compare in young mice (9-12 days old) the organization of the reticular inputs to first and higher order somatosensory relays, namely, the ventral posterior lateral nucleus and posterior nucleus, respectively. The reticu...

GABAergic neurons of the thalamic reticular nucleus (nRt) provide thalamocortical relay neurons with feedback inhibition that influences sensory processing and thalamocortical rhythm generation. Mutual interactions between reticular neurons coordinate oscillatory activities developed within the network during normal sleep and in absence epilepsy, but the chemical versus electrical nature of the...

We investigated the use of flavoprotein autofluorescence (FA) as a tool to map long-range neural connections and combined FA with laser-uncaging of glutamate to facilitate rapid long-range mapping in vitro. Using the somatosensory thalamocortical slice, we determined that the spatial resolution of FA is >or=100-200 microm and that the sensitivity for detecting thalamocortical synaptic activity ...

Transection of the rubrospinal tract in rats, performed before lesion of the red nucleus, resulted in the facilitated recovery of motor activity and operantly conditioned reflexes. Such facilitation was absent when the red nucleus is lesioned alone. This phenomenon is explained by the switching of descending influences on the corticospinal tract through the participation of the following system...