The thalamus revisited: where do we go from here?

Abstract

In my academic lifetime, two outstanding books on the thalamus have been published. Now both have been reissued as expanded, updated and improved second editions. The most massive of these, the second edition of The Thalamus by E.G. Jones, follows his 900-page, 1985 edition. While the early edition was truly remarkable, the two-volume, second edition of 1679 pages of expanded size represents an effort reminiscent of Polyak's 1390-page tome, The Vertebrate Visual System, published in 1957. Jones retains one of my favorite quotations from the first to the second volume, one attributed to the great neuroanatomist and neuroscientist, Jerzy Rose: ‘The thalamus is like the Flying Dutchman: many have heard of it, some believe in it, but few have actually seen it’ (c. 1940). Today, I am not sure how many have heard of the Flying Dutchman, a mythical sailing ship, but Jones’ first edition did much to correct uncertainties about the thalamus, as The Thalamus became one of the most referenced books in neuroscience. The basic organization and many features of the first edition are carried over to the second, but this is bigger and better in every way. Most impressive, the second edition is profusely illustrated with drawings, photographs of investigators, and especially, photomicrographs of brain sections through the thalamus. The photomicrographs are not just of a brain section here and there, but of series of sections from the same cases, and not just from the laboratory species that we can view in the many stereotaxic atlases that are now available, but also of species such as tree shrews, galagos and the egg-laying monotremes. On page 1210, for example, one can see how well differentiated the anterior nuclei of the thalamus are in rabbits compared to rats, or even most primates. No wonder rabbits played such a significant …