ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Neurodegeneration
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1616239
This article is part of the Research TopicNeuroinflammation, Neurodegeneration, and Auditory-Vestibular DisordersView all 15 articles
Thalamic nuclei volumes are related to disease stage in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Provisionally accepted
Tianrui Wen1
Jun Zhu1Sujuan Sun1Yujing Chen1Ninglu Gao1Mingjie Ma1Xinyue Chen1
Shuangwu Liu1Pengfei Lin1,2
Yan Deng2*- 1Shandong University, Jinan, China
- 2Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: To explore atrophy patterns in thalamic nuclei at different phases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and determine any correlations between thalamic nucleus volume and either cognitive impairments or motor disabilities.We used the King's clinical staging system for ALS to divide 76 consecutive patients with ALS by disease stage. We investigated patterns of thalamic atrophy in the patients and in 94 healthy controls (HCs). Cognitive functions were evaluated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Frontal Assessment Battery, Boston Naming Test, and Auditory Verbal Learning Test.Results: Considering all ALS patients, no significant differences were observed in the volume of any thalamic nuclei between the ALS group and HCs. Thalamic nucleus volumes remained normal in ALS patients at King's Stage 2 and Stage 3. However, atrophy was detected in the bilateral anteroventral nucleus, bilateral pulvinar-limitans, bilateral mediodorsal-paratenial-reuniens, bilateral motor hub, bilateral sensory hub, and bilateral intralaminar nucleus in patients who had reached King's Stage 3. In these patients, the volume of the bilateral motor nuclei was associated with the revised ALS Functional Rating Scale scores, and that of the right pulvinar-limitans independently correlated with MMSE scores.Our study provides a comprehensive profile of thalamic atrophy in ALS patients. The thalamic atrophy patterns in these patients extremely differs at different King's Stages, and we suggest that these alterations might result largely from sequential, regional patterns of TDP-43 pathology in ALS. Furthermore, thalamic atrophy might play important roles in motor disability and global cognitive impairments observed in patients with ALS.
Keywords: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Thalamus, MRI, bilateral anteroventral, bilateral pulvinar-limitans
Received: 22 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wen, Zhu, Sun, Chen, Gao, Ma, Chen, Liu, Lin and Deng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Deng, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, 250012, Shandong Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.