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Clinical Features of Thalamic Stroke

  • Cerebrovascular Disorders (HP Adams, Section Editor)
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The thalamus plays an important role in different brain functions including memory, emotions, sleep-wake cycle, executive functions, mediating general cortical alerting responses, processing of sensory (including taste, somatosensory, visual, and auditory) information and relaying it to the cortex, and sensorimotor control. Thalamic stroke, both in isolation and in combination with infarcts involving other structures, are not rare. The functional complexity of the thalami nuclei and the not uncommon normal variations of arteries supply the thalamus induce wide variations in presentation of thalami infarcts. In patients with an unusual collection of deficits difficult to explain by a single lesion, in particular where there is impaired vigilance, thalamic disease should be considered which may mimic several different neurological conditions. By researching the literature, we found that the characteristic stroke syndrome of paramedian thalamic infarction is probably underdiagnosed. In addition to thalamic infarct, thalamic lesions can be caused by deep cerebral venous thrombosis with neuropsychological and radiological features that should be considered in the differential diagnosis of intracranial artery occlusion or bleeding, especially in young patients.

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank Dr. Myrna Rosenfeld for taking the time to review this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, new territory, Hong Kong

    **ang Yan Chen PhD & Ka Sing Wong MD

  2. Department of Neurology, Shanghai First People’s Hospital, Medical College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Qiaoshu Wang MD

  3. Department of Neurology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Qingdao, People’s Republic of China

    **n Wang MD

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Correspondence to Ka Sing Wong MD.

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**ang Yan Chen, Qiaoshu Wang, **n Wang, and Ka Sing Wong declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Cerebrovascular Disorders

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Chen, X.Y., Wang, Q., Wang, X. et al. Clinical Features of Thalamic Stroke. Curr Treat Options Neurol 19, 5 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11940-017-0441-x

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