Diverse thalamic projections to the prefrontal cortex in the rhesus monkey

We studied the sources of thalamic projections to prefrontal areas of nine rhesus monkeys with the aid of retrograde tracers (horseradish peroxidase or fluorescent dyes). Our goal was to determine the proportion of labeled neurons contributing to this projection system by the mediodorsal (MD) nucleus compared to those distributed in other thalamic nuclei, and to investigate the relationship of thalamic projections to specific architectonic areas of the prefrontal cortex. We selected areas for study within both the basoventral (areas 11, 12, and ventral 46) and the mediodorsal (areas 32, 14, 46, and 8) prefrontal sectors. This choice was based on our previous studies, which indicate differences in cortical projections to these two distinct architectonic sectors (Barbas, '88; Barbas and Pandya, '89). In addition, for each sector we included areas with different architectonic profiles, which is also relevant to the connectional patterns of the prefrontal cortices.

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