Abstract: | We investigated the role of different thalamic nuclei in the relaying of afferent signals into the anterior section of the coronary gyrus and into the orbital gyrus, using the evoked-potentials method, in delicate experiments on cats under Nembutal or Nembutal-chloralose narcosis, and also in experiments on cats not anesthetized but immobilized by injection of succinyl choline. Specific projection zones of the lingual, vagus, and glosso-pharyngeal nerves have been charted in the anterior coronary gyrus. The thalamic relay for that region is the medial pole of the ventral posterior nucleus. The orbital gyrus contains associative projections of both somatic and visceral nature. The relay for signal transmission in this region is also located in the ventral posterior nucleus. Relaying takes place, however, not in the central parts of the nucleus, where projections of the corresponding receptor zones have been charted, but nearer its lower medial surface. There is also an indirect route for associative projections, passing through the medial center and the intralaminar nuclei. That route emerges into the cortex through the ventral anterior and reticular nuclei. A feature of the projections of the vagus nerve in the orbital cortex is the existence of a supplementary region that exhibits responses, lying along the sulcus rhinalis. It was found that relaying for that region takes place in the ventral medial and submedial nuclei of the thalamus.N. I. Pirogov Vinnitsa Medical Institute. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 65–72, July–August, 1969. |