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Re: The thalamus and behavior: Effects of anatomically distinct strokes

In reading a recent review by Carrera and Bogousslavsky, [1] I was surprised to see that the authors used drawings adapted from our atlas of the human thalamus (section D4.5, Fig. 10) without citation.[2]

In addition, some subdivisions were erroneously added at this level of the thalamus (Pf and CM, in the CL nucleus; VPM) or mislabeled (VPLp instead of LP, VPLa, instead of VPLp + VPLa, MTT instead of VAmc). Other modifications include changes in outlines of the posterior part of CL and of PuL (Pul in the paper), as well as changes in some abbreviations (e.g. Co instead of CeM, DM instead of MD).

References

1. Carrera E, Bogousslavsky J. The thalamus and behavior: Effects of anatomically distinct strokes Neurology 2006; 66: 1817-1823.

2. Morel A, Magnin M, Jeanmonod D. Multiarchitectonic and stereotactic atlas of the human thalamus. J Comp Neurol 1997;387:588-630.

Send Correspondence to journal:
Re: Reply from the Authors

We read with interest the correspondence by Dr Morel. We did not know about the existence of her article so we could not have adapted our drawings from this excellent atlas. Our review was not intended as an anatomic study. As mentioned in the legend, the drawings are a schematic representation inspired by many other papers and anatomical books published before Dr Morel’s work including Gray's anatomy, Nieuwenhuys’s book of anatomy, and Jones’s book about the thalamus. [1-3]

Similarly, the vascular supply of the thalamus was taken from many articles and textbooks. [4-6]We think that our drawings, representing a kind of synthesis, are sufficiently different from other work to justify the fact that we did not to cite all books and papers about the subject.

We invite Dr. Morel to consider other scientific work in which the thalamic nuclei are represented similarly as in their publication. Additionally, in reviewing the literature it is clear that there is no uniform consensus regarding blood supply and thalamic nuclei location as well as terminology.

References

1. William PL. Gray's anatomy. New York, NY: Churchill Livingstone: 1995:1085.

2. Nieuwenhuys R. The human central nervous system. A synopsis and atlas. 3rd revised Edition. New York, NY: Springer Verlag:1988:242.  

3. Jones ED. Thalamus, Experimental and Clinical aspects (Vol 2). New York, NY: Elsevier: 1997: 425-499.  

4. Bogousslavsky J, Regli F, Uske A. Thalamic infarcts: clinical syndromes, etiology, and prognosis. Neurology 1988;38:837-848.

5. Tatu L, Moulin T, Bogousslavsky J, Duvernoy H. Arterial territories of the human brain: cerebral hemispheres. Neurology 1998;50:1699-1708.

6. Von Cramon DY, Hebel N, Schuri U. A contribution to the anatomic basis of thalamic amnesia. Brain 1985;108:993-1008.