Emotional past and future events after pulvinar damage: A neuropsychological case series

The pulvinar nucleus represents a key neural structure involved in signalling emotional content in the domain of visual perception, whereas its role in the processing of simulated emotional events is less clear. fMRI research has hinted at a role for the pulvinar in imagined emotional scenarios, but the evidence is mixed and this proposal has yet to be tested using the lesion study method. In this study, 3 patients with unilateral lesions to the pulvinar, and 10 matched control participants, completed a set of well-established tasks that required them to think about emotional past and future events. This procedure allowed for a comprehensive evaluation of emotional past and future thinking, using both subjective and objective measures. The results indicate that, relative to controls, processing of emotional past and future events is not impaired in patients with unilateral pulvinar nucleus lesions. However, outcomes of this study should be interpreted in the context of the volume, lateralisation and location of pulvinar lesions in these cases. These data have implications for understanding of the processing of emotionally-salient stimuli in the context of pulvinar damage.