TCD can be treated with neurosurgical methods like the central lateral thalamotomy, which due to its invasiveness is only used on patients that have proven resistant to conventional therapies.
At the base of the theory lies diminished excitatory or increased inhibitory input at the thalamic level.
This leads to a switch of the thalamocortical neurons from tonic to burst firing and subsequently entrains thalamic and cortical areas with pathological oscillations at around 5 Hz.
[2] It was also proposed that psychotic disorders present in Parkinson disease‐dementia with Lewy bodies depend on thalamic abnormal rhythms.
[3] While it is not clear how this happens in detail, surgical intervention by means of lesioning small parts of the central lateral thalamic areas has proven successful as a therapy for Parkinson's Disease as well as neurogenic pain.