BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) is the most frequent subsyndrome of the idiopathic generalized epilepsies, and experimental investigations support that the thalamus is a key structure in the mechanisms of JME. Texture analysis (TA) is an image processing technique which can be used to characterize images such as MRI. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this work was to investigate the thalamus of patients with JME using TA, a quantitative neuroimaging technique. METHODS: Patients and controls were submitted to MRI investigation. Images were acquired in a 2-Tesla scanner. The T1 volumetric sequence was used for thalamic segmentation and extraction of texture parameters. Twenty-four patients with a diagnosis of JME and 20 healthy volunteers were investigated. RESULTS: Texture analysis revealed differences between the right thalamus of patients and controls. CONCLUSIONS: The present investigation supports the participation of the thalamus in the disease mechanisms of JME. Texture analysis may be a useful tool in the quantitative neuroimaging investigation of the epilepsies and can be important to understand JME.