Abstract
The motor thalamus can be divided into a pallidal-receiving and a cerebellar-receiving part (Ilinsky and Kultas-Ilinsky, 1987). According to this definition, the nuclei of the pallidal-receiving part can be grouped together as VA (ventral anterior), those of the cerebellar-receiving part as VL (ventral lateral). The cerebellar-receiving VL is traditionally viewed as a relay center through which the cerebellum sends information to motor cortical areas (Massion and Sasaki, 1979). In reality, it is more than a simple relay because it contains interneurons (Ilinsky et al., 1993) and receives projections from various sources, such as the cerebral cortex, intrathalamic nuclei, midbrain, brain stem, and spinal cord (c.f. Jones, 1985; Nakano et al., 1985; Anderson and DeVito, 1987, Ilinsky et al., 1999). Information from a number of sources (e.g. cerebral cortex, Uno et al., 1970; thalamic reticular nucleus, Ando et al., 1995; spinal cord, Mackel and Noda, 1988) converges with cerebellar information in VL neurons and can, therefore, modulate the information that the cerebellum sends to the motor cortex.
This paper is dedicated to Professor Hiroshi Asanuma.
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Mackel, R. (2001). Physiological Evidence for Spinal Cord Input to the Motor Thalamus. In: Kultas-Ilinsky, K., Ilinsky, I.A. (eds) Basal Ganglia and Thalamus in Health and Movement Disorders. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1235-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1235-6_9
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