Ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus, dentatorubrothalamic tract, and caudal zona incerta: stimulation of which structure provides ongoing tremor control in patients with essential tremor?

Objective: Essential tremor (ET) is the most common movement disorder. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) is known to improve symptoms in patients with medication-resistant ET. However, the clinical effectiveness of VIM-DBS may vary, and other targets have been proposed.

Somatotopic organization of the ventral nuclear group of the dorsal thalamus: deep brain stimulation for neuropathic pain reveals new insights into the facial homunculus.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an experimental treatment for medication-refractory neuropathic pain. The ventral posteromedial (VPM) and ventral posterolateral (VPL) nuclei of the thalamus are popular targets for the treatment of facial and limb pain, respectively. While intraoperative testing is used to adjust targeting of patient-specific pain locations, a better understanding of thalamic somatotopy may improve targeting of specific body regions including the individual trigeminal territories, face, arm, and leg.

Structural connections of the centromedian nucleus of thalamus and their relevance for neuromodulation in generalized drug-resistant epilepsy: insight from a tractography study.

Background: Epilepsy is a widespread neurologic disorder and almost one-third of patients suffer from drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). Neuromodulation targeting the centromediannucleus of the thalamus (CM) has been showing promising results for patients with generalized DRE who are not surgical candidates. Recently, the effect of CM- deep brain stimulation (DBS) in DRE patients was investigated in the Electrical Stimulation of Thalamus for Epilepsy of Lennox-Gastaut phenotype (ESTEL) trial, a monocentric randomized-controlled study.

Deep Brain Stimulation of the Medial Forebrain Bundle for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Systematic Review Focused on the Long-Term Antidepressive Effect.

Objective: Major depression affects millions of people worldwide and has important social and economic consequences. Since up to 30% of patients do not respond to several lines of antidepressive drugs, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been evaluated for the management of treatment-resistant depression (TRD). The superolateral branch of the medial forebrain bundle (slMFB) appears as a "hypothesis-driven target" because of its role in the reward-seeking system, which is dysfunctional in depression.