Abstract:
In stereotaxic neurosurgery, a variety of operative procedures focus on thalamic targets.
The nomenclature of thalamic nuclei and sub-nuclei, however, has not yet been settled.
In clinical and laboratory environments several terminologies coexist. This is an
obstacle to both communication and a better understanding of recent electrophysiological
findings. In the late 1980s, the application of new histochemical and immunohisto-chemical
methods led to a deeper insight into existing correlations between the nomenclatures.
As a uniform terminology of the thalamus is still lacking, we created a knowledge-based
system (thalamus) which gives a comprehensible survey about the most important terminologies. The
different nomenclatures are related to each other by organizing them in a component-integral
relation. This part-whole relation contains both the knowledge on the subdivisions
of the thalamus as well as the knowledge on the correlations between the various nomenclatures.
Keywords:
Terminology - Thalamus - Merologisms - Databases - Stereotaxy