Medial dorsal nucleus

Not to be confused with Dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus.

Brain: Medial dorsal nucleus
Thalamic nuclei: MNG = Midline nuclear group AN = Anterior nuclear group MD = Medial dorsal nucleus VNG = Ventral nuclear group VA = Ventral anterior nucleus VL = Ventral lateral nucleus VPL = Ventral posterolateral nucleus VPM = Ventral posteromedial nucleus LNG = Lateral nuclear group PUL = Pulvinar MTh = Metathalamus LG = Lateral geniculate nucleus MG = Medial geniculate nucleus
Thalamic nuclei
Latin	nucleus mediodorsalis thalami
NeuroNames	hier-295
MeSH	mediodorsal+thalamic+nucleus
NeuroLex ID	birnlex_1543

The medial dorsal nucleus (or dorsomedial nucleus of thalamus) is a large nucleus in the thalamus.

It is believed to play a role in memory.^[1]

Anatomy

It receives inputs from the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system and in turn relays them to the Pre-Frontal Association Cortex. As a result, it plays a crucial role in attention, planning, organization, abstract thinking, multi-tasking and active memory.

The connections of the medial dorsal nucleus have even been used to delineate the prefrontal cortex of the Göttingen minipig brain.^[2]

By stereology the number of brain cells in the region has been estimated to around 6.43 million neurons in the adult human brain and 36.3 million glial cells, and with the newborn having quite different numbers: around 11.2 million neurons and 10.6 million glial cells.^[3]

Clinical significance

Lesions of the medial dorsal nucleus have been associated with Korsakoff's syndrome.

Additional images

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  Thalamus

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  Thalamus

References

1. ^ Li XB, Inoue T, Nakagawa S, Koyama T (May 2004). "Effect of mediodorsal thalamic nucleus lesion on contextual fear conditioning in rats". Brain Res. 1008 (2): 261–72. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2004.02.038. PMID 15145764. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0006899304003683. 
2. ^ Jacob Jelsing, Anders Hay-Schmidt, Tim Dyrby, Ralf Hemmingsen, Harry B. M. Uylings, Bente Pakkenberg (2006). "The prefrontal cortex in the Göttingen minipig brain defined by neural projection criteria and cytoarchitecture". Brain Research Bulletin 70 (4–6): 322–336. doi:10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.06.009. PMID 17027768. 
3. ^ Maja Abitz, Rune Damgaard Nielsen, Edward G. Jones, Henning Laursen, Niels Graem and Bente Pakkenberg (2007). "Excess of Neurons in the Human Newborn Mediodorsal Thalamus Compared with That of the Adult". Cerebral Cortex 17 (11): 2573–2578. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl163. PMID 17218480. 

External links

• BrainMaps at UCDavis Mediodorsal nucleus