Evidence that thalamic efferent neurones are non-cholinergic: a study in the rat with special reference to the thalamostriatal pathway.

Controversy surrounds the question as to whether some fibres of the thalamostriatal projection, are cholinergic. The present experiments show that lesions of the parafascicular-intralaminar thalamus produced no reductions in choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activities in any area of microdissected rat caudate-putamen complex or dorsolateral frontal cortex. We conclude that thalamostriatal projections are entirely non-cholinergic.