The Pulvinar-LP Complex

In his introduction, Cooper, who chaired the symposium at St. Barnabas Hospital, March 1972, that gave rise to this monograph, puts an adept neurosurgical finger on the central issue. He remarks on the apparent paradox that a lesion in a given thalamic nucleus may have different effects in different patients, depending on the state of health of the particular nervous system with the lesion, and concludes that "What may seem at our present stage of Knowledge to be capricious behavior of a neurologic structure, may actually be so sophisticated as to be beyond our present capabilities of evaluation." The profound truth of this statement as regards the pulvinar-LP complex becomes evident as one reads the nine principal contributions to the symposium and the several invited and less formal discussions. Rakic opens with a concise summary of his careful observations on the origin of the neurons of the human pulvinar, indicating