Anterior Nuclear Group

Anatomy

• At the front end of the thalamus, between the two limbs of the internal medullary lamina.
• Input: mammillary body (mammillothalamic tract) and hippocampal formation (fornix); output: cingulate and retrosplenial cortex.

Functions

• Consolidation of episodic memory (Papez circuit).
• Spatial navigation; head-direction signals.

Clinical

• Memory impairment in thalamic amnesia and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (mammillary body–anterior thalamus).
• Anterior thalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation in refractory focal epilepsy (adults).

Treatment

This region from the perspective of medication, psychotherapy and neuromodulation. Letter badges are evidence levels.

• Anterior thalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation in refractory focal epilepsy (SANTE; 110 patients): median reduction in seizure frequency 40.4% vs 14.5% with placebo in the blinded phase; 75% at 7 years in open follow-up. FDA approval 2018, age 18 and over (Fisher et al., 2010). A
• Emergency thiamine in Wernicke encephalopathy; it can also occur in adolescents with anorexia nervosa and after bariatric surgery. A

In the model

How this structure is defined in the 3D model, and the data source.

Najdenovska et al. (2018) thalamic nuclei atlas (diffusion MRI clustering; ICBM 2009a symmetric template). Each voxel of the CerebrA thalamus was assigned to the most probable nucleus in these probability maps; because the atlas thalamus is about 20% larger than CerebrA’s, the borders were fitted to the shell (overlap of the two thalami: Dice 0.86–0.89).

References

Full citations for the card; links go to the paper (DOI) or a PubMed search.

1. Fisher R et al. Electrical stimulation of the anterior nucleus of thalamus for treatment of refractory epilepsy. Epilepsia 2010;51(5):899–908. Search PubMed