Contralateral representation of tongue thermal information in the rat thalamus.

Twenty-six thalamic neurons receiving innocuous thermal inputs from the tongue were identified in a limited region extending from the dorsomedial region of the posteromedial ventral nucleus to the dorsolateral region of the parvicellular part. Nine neurons had a cold receptive field and one neuron had neighboring cold and warm receptive fields on the anterior tongue contralateral to the recording side.