Ventral Anterior Nucleus

Anatomy

• In the ventral anterior part of the thalamus.
• Input: GPi and SNr (GABAergic); output: premotor cortex, SMA and prefrontal cortex.

Functions

• Planning and initiation of movement (basal ganglia–thalamus–cortex loop).

Clinical

• Disorders of basal ganglia output (parkinsonism, dystonia, tics) reach the cortex through this thalamic link.

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

This substructure’s card draws on the parent structure’s references: Thalamus.