Reduction of right medial pulvinar volume and neuron number in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia-like psychosis associated with right lacunar thalamic infarct

“…In addition, an MRI study (Gilbert et al, 2001) localized the thalamic volume deficit in schizophrenia to the right posterior medial thalamic subdivision, a region including the right medial half of the pulvinar, and consistent with restricted loss of function to the right hemisphere, particularly to the temporal lobe regions associated with altered visual perception (Gilbert et al, 2001). Postmortem studies have also reported a reduction in the volume and neuron number of the right medial pulvinar nucleus (Byne et al, 2002(Byne et al, , 2007.…”

Investigation of Anatomical Thalamo-Cortical Connectivity and fMRI Activation in Schizophrenia

“…Our data offer a possible anatomical substrate for differences in functional connectivity between patients with schizophrenia and controls previously described with fMRI (Meda et al, 2010;Schlosser et al, 2003;Welsh et al, 2010;Zhou et al, 2007) and are consistent with a reduction in connectivity from multiple sources in the thalamus to the LPFC. Besides three studies showing that neurons specifically projecting to LPFC in the medio-dorsal nucleus of the thalamus may be reduced in schizophrenia (Byne et al, 2002;Popken et al, 2000;Young et al, 2000), reduced sizes of the pulvinar, of the centromedian nuclei (both projecting in part to the LPFC: Byne et al, 2007;Kemether et al, 2003) and reductions in oligodendrocyte number in the anterior principal nucleus (Byne et al, 2006(Byne et al, , 2008 were found in schizophrenia. An unexpected increase in total connectivity from the thalamus to the sensorimotor cortices was found, but it is difficult to interpret this in the absence of a prior hypothesis.…”

“…Abnormalities in the medio-dorsal, pulvinar, and centromedian nuclei of the thalamus, all connected to the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), a site of well-documented abnormalities in schizophrenia (Weinberger et al, 2001), have been reported with several methods (eg, Andrews et al, 2006;Byne et al, 2002;Byne et al, 2007;Harms et al, 2007;Hazlett et al, 1999;Kemether et al, 2003;Kessler et al, 2009;Kumari et al, 2010;Lehrer et al, 2005;Popken et al, 2000;Rose et al, 2006, but see, for example, Danos et al, 2005;Dorph-Petersen et al, 2004;Kreczmanski et al, 2007 for negative findings). Some functional MRI (fMRI) studies found abnormalities in the correlation between the activity in the thalamus and the PFC in schizophrenia (eg, Meda et al, 2010;Schlosser et al, 2003;Welsh et al, 2010;Zhou et al, 2007), which may reflect alterations in anatomical connectivity.…”

Revisiting visual dysfunctions in schizophrenia from the retina to the cortical cells: A manifestation of defective neurodevelopment

“…Of interest, pulvinocortical disconnections were found in SZ patients and authors postulate that this feature could be related to the visual attention deficit often observed in SZ (Luck & Gold, 2008;Mitelman et al, 2006). Moreover, many studies demonstrated that the total neuron number and the volume of the pulvinar were diminished in schizophrenia (Byne et al, 2002(Byne et al, , 2007Kemether et al, 2003) and that glucose metabolism was reduced in this structure among unmedicated schizophrenia patients (Buchsbaum et al, 2007;Hazlett et al, 2004) supporting potential impairments of the pulvinar in schizophrenia.…”