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A thalamic nucleus specific for pain and temperature sensation

Nature volume 372, pages 770–773 (1994)Cite this article

Abstract

THE existence of a posterolateral thalamic relay nucleus for pain and temperature sensation was postulated in 1911, on the basis of the stroke-induced analgesia and thermanaesthesia found paradox-ically in patients with thalamic pain syndrome1. Pain or tempera-ture sensations can be evoked in humans by electrical stimulation in a vaguely defined region of the posterolateral thalamus2'3. Here we use anterograde tracing and single unit recordings to demon-strate that there is a distinct nucleus in the posterior thalamus of the macaque monkey that receives a dense, topographic input from spinothalamic lamina I neurons and in which almost all neurons are nociceptive- or thermoreceptive-specific. Immunohistochemical staining showed that this nucleus is defined by a dense calbindin-positive fibre plexus in the macaque, so we applied the same stain-ing method to sections of human thalamus. We found a nearly identical fibre plexus localized within a distinct nucleus that is cytoarchitectonically homologous to the lamina I relay nucleus in the macaque thalamus. The stereotaxic coordinates of this nucleus and its location relative to the main somatosensory representation fit clinical descriptions of the pain-producing region in humans. We conclude that this is a specific thalamic nucleus for pain and temperature sensation in both monkey and human.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Neurobiology, Barrow Neurological Institute, 350 West Thomas Road, Phoenix, Arizona, 85013, USA

    A. D. Craig & E.-T. Zhang

  2. Centre de Recherche en Sciences Neurologiques and Département de Stomatologie, Faculté de Médicine Dentaire, Universite de Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, H3C3J7, Canada

    M. C. Bushnell

  3. · Department of Cell Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Linkoping, Linkoping, S-581 85, Sweden

    A. Blomqvist

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  1. A. D. Craig
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  2. M. C. Bushnell
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  3. E.-T. Zhang
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  4. A. Blomqvist
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Craig, A., Bushnell, M., Zhang, ET. et al. A thalamic nucleus specific for pain and temperature sensation. Nature 372, 770–773 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/372770a0

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