Thalamic Projection to Frontal Cortex in Man

The object of this communication is to report the present position at the Maudsley laboratory of research on the projection of nerve cells of the human thalamus on to frontal cortex. Previous, more tentative, reports on this topic were published by Meyer, Beck, and McLardy in 1947 and by Meyer, McLardy, and Beck in 1948. The main material used consisted of 54 cerebral hemispheres with varied leucotomy lesions. A few cases of traumatic and of vascular damage to frontal cortex were also employed. Cortical areas involved in the primary lesions were correlated with the position of retrograde nerve cell degeneration and glial proliferation observed in Nissl-stained serial sections of the thalamus. For the sake of clarity