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The mammillary bodies and thalamus are important centers within a complex, interconnected, limbic memory circuit. Whereas structural imaging often identifies abnormalities in these centers, the critically important functional connections between them have not been evaluated. In this study, researchers measured functional connectivity between the mammillary bodies and anterior thalamus in seven patients with alcoholism and Wernicke encephalopathy (WE), 14 patients with alcoholism but not WE, and 14 normal controls. The researchers used a recently developed MRI technique that measures resting-state functional connectivity strength (RSFCS) between connected brain regions (Nat Rev Neurosci 2007; 8:700). Imaging and studies of verbal and nonverb…