• Arash Kamali, Niloofar Karbasian, Farzaneh Ghazi Sherbaf, Lindsay A Wilken, Azin Aein, Haris I Sair, Octavio Arevalo Espejo, Pejman Rabiei, Sally J Choi, Saeedeh Mirbagheri, Roy F Riascos, and Khader M Hasan.
• Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA. Electronic address: arash.kamali@uth.tmc.edu.
• Neuroscience. 2020 Apr 15; 432: 55-62.

AbstractAs a non-limbic structure, the human thalamus is the most important modulator of the limbic system. The hypothalamus plays vital roles in the survival of species by regulating fear, learning, feeding behavior, circadian rhythm, sociosexual and reproductive activities of the limbic system through connections with the thalamus. The detailed anatomy of the pathways responsible for mediating these responses, however, is yet to be determined. The mammillothalamic tract is known as the major direct thalamo-hypothalamic connection in the primates including the human brain connecting the ventral thalamus to the dorsal hypothalamus. Multiple dissection animal studies revealed additional connections specially from the dorsal thalamus to the ventral hypothalamic nuclei. Diffusion weighted imaging may be helpful in better visualizing the surgical anatomy of this additional connectivity noninvasively. This study aimed to investigate the utility of high spatial and high angular resolution diffusion weighted tractography technique for mapping the trajectory of this dorsal thalamic connectivity with the ventral hypothalamus in the human brain. We studied 30 healthy human subjects. Using a high-resolution diffusion weighted tractography technique, for the first time, we were able to delineate and reconstruct the trajectory of the dorsal thalamo-hypothalamic tract (DTH). We further revealed the close relationship of the DTH, fornix and hippocampus in healthy adult human brain.Copyright © 2020 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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