Fig. 2

The brain lesion pattern and anterior cingulate-subcortical circuit of apathy. a The lesion brain region with the highest frequency of apathy is the anterior cingulate cortex (especially on the left), followed by the left medial frontal, medial orbitofrontal, medial thalamus, left lateral orbitofrontal, left superior and ventrolateral frontal regions, as well as the parietal, the head of the left caudate nucleus, putamen, and other regions of the frontal lobe. b The anterior cingulate-subcortical circuit begins in the anterior cingulate cortex and projects to the ventral striatum, which includes the nucleus accumbens, ventral putamen, ventromedial caudate, and olfactory tubercle. The ventral striatum has circuit linkages to the ventral pallidum and rostrodorsal substantia nigra. Then the ventral pallidum provides limited input to the mediodorsal thalamus. The anterior cingulate circuit is closed with projections from the dorsal portion of the magnocellular mediodorsal thalamus to the anterior cingulate. Abbreviations: GP: globus pallidus, SN: substantia nigra. b A visual adaptation of a figure from Nobis et al. [13], with permission