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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Aug 29.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Neurosci. 2011 Feb 6;14(3):357–365. doi: 10.1038/nn.2753

Figure 6. Severing the link between the cerebellum and basal ganglia alleviates dystonia.

Figure 6

(a) Using bilateral electrical lesions, the CL nucleus of the thalamus was selectively ablated. The photograph on the left shows Nissl stain of one such lesion, and the schematic on right shows the relevant brain structures with the lesion area marked in red. The scale bar corresponds to 1 mm. Legends correspond to: GP: Globus Palidus, CPu; Caudate/Putaman, and the following nuclei of the thalamus: CM: centrolmedian, CL: centrolateral, VL: ventral lateral, VP: ventral posterior, VM: ventral medial, and Pc: Paracentral.

(b) The consequences of CL lesions (or sham operations noted as “No CL lesion”) on the motor symptoms associated with chronic perfusion of 36 ng/h ouabain into the cerebellum of mice was determined by assessing their locomotion and dystonia scores. Lesioning the CL significantly reduced ouabain-induced motor dysfunction and prevented generation of dystonia.