Introduction
THE CONCEPT that convulsive activity may originate in subcortical structures and propagate to other subcortical and cortical centers is a recent one. The medial temporal structures—the hippocampus and amygdala—were early suspected to be capable of such activity; the role of the basal ganglia and thalamus in epilepsy has been investigated without conclusive results. The following experiments concern the dissemination of seizure activity from each of these subcortical nuclear masses. The methodology has been described in the first section of this paper and will not be repeated here.
Thalamus
Anatomical Relationships of the Thalamus.— The thalamic connections may be divided into specific and nonspecific systems. The afferent specific tracts, consisting of the spinothalamic tract, medial lemniscus, trigeminal lemniscus, and brachium conjunctivum, terminate in the ventral and lateral part of the thalamus in a somatotopic and functional arrangement. The sensory systems terminate in the posterior and ventral portion of the