AUTHOR=Tu Sicong , Miller Laurie , Piguet Olivier , Hornberger Michael TITLE=Accelerated forgetting of contextual details due to focal medio-dorsal thalamic lesion JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=8 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00320 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00320 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=

Effects of thalamic nuclei damage and related white matter tracts on memory performance are still debated. This is particularly evident for the medio-dorsal thalamus which has been less clear in predicting amnesia than anterior thalamus changes. The current study addresses this issue by assessing 7 thalamic stroke patients with consistent unilateral lesions focal to the left medio-dorsal nuclei for immediate and delayed memory performance on standard visual and verbal tests of anterograde memory, and over the long-term (>24 h) on an object-location associative memory task. Thalamic patients showed selective impairment to delayed recall, but intact recognition memory. Patients also showed accelerated forgetting of contextual details after a 24 h delay, compared to controls. Importantly, the mammillothalamic tract was intact in all patients, which suggests a role for the medio-dorsal nuclei in recall and early consolidation memory processes.