Functional Anatomy of the Thalamus

Abstract

Progress in research on the human thalamus has been relatively slow for several reasons. For example, modern anatomical techniques such as retrograde tracing with horseradish peroxidase (HRP), autoradiography, and immunohistochemistry are certainly not applicable to the human in the living state. Moreover, suitable normal and pathological human brain tissue is often difficult to obtain. Given these constraints, data presented in this chapter are collected mainly from the previous descriptions by anatomists, especially of Hassler (1982) and of Van Buren and Borke (1972), and from physiological observations obtained during stereotactic interventions. The human thalamus, which is located under the lateral ventricles, is a symmetric, oval-shaped mass of gray matter sandwiching the third ventricle.