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Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy

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01.11.2011 | Original Article

The morphological characteristics of corticostriatal and thalamostriatal neurons and their intrastriatal terminals in rats

verfasst von: Bingbing Liu, Lisi Ouyang, Shuhua Mu, Yaxi Zhu, Keyi Li, Mali Zhan, Zongwei Liu, Yu Jia, Wanlong Lei

Erschienen in: Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy | Ausgabe 9/2011

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Abstract

Purpose

The glutamatergic projection from the cerebral cortex and the thalamus extensively innervates the neostriatal neurons. However, some conflicts in the published literatures about cortical and thalamic intrastriatal synaptic terminals still need to be resolved. The present study intends to further elucidate the morphological characteristics of these two types of the terminals and their neurons.

Methods

The corticostriatal and thalamostriatal terminals were immunolabeled for vesicular glutamate transporter type 1 (VGluT1) and 2 (VGluT2), respectively, and their neurons were retrograde labeled by biotinylated dextran amine 3,000 molecular weight (BDA3k) injection into the dorsolateral striatum of rats. The characteristics of the corticostriatal and thalamostriatal terminals were observed at the LM and EM levels, and the data were statistically analyzed with SPSS10.0 software.

Results

We observed that 63.53% of VGluT1+ terminals synapsed on dendritic spines, which was different from VGluT2+ terminals with the equal percentage of synapses on spines and dendrites (14.88 and 17.86%, respectively). Notably, VGluT1+ axospinous synaptic terminals were remarkably larger than VGluT2+ axospinous synaptic terminals. Terminal size-frequency distribution analysis showed that VGluT1+ terminals were within the size ranges of 0.4–0.5 and 0.8–0.9 μm, and VGluT2+ terminals were in the ranges of 0.4–0.5 and 0.6–0.7 μm. Perforated-postsynaptic densities (-PSDs) were more frequently found in VGluT1+ axospinous synaptic terminals than in VGluT2+ axospinous terminals. Furthermore, BDA3k-labeled corticostrital neurons were larger in perikaryal diameter than the thalamostriatal neurons, and they were also categorized as the two main populations based on their size-frequency distribution.

Conclusions

The morphological characteristics of corticostriatal and thalamostriatal terminals and neurons have implications for understanding the roles of synaptic plasticity in adaptive motor control by the basal ganglia, and they have facilitations for understanding the complexities of basal ganglia function.

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Titel: The morphological characteristics of corticostriatal and thalamostriatal neurons and their intrastriatal terminals in rats
verfasst von: Bingbing Liu
Lisi Ouyang
Shuhua Mu
Yaxi Zhu
Keyi Li
Mali Zhan
Zongwei Liu
Yu Jia
Wanlong Lei
Publikationsdatum: 01.11.2011
Verlag: Springer-Verlag
Erschienen in: Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy / Ausgabe 9/2011
Print ISSN: 0930-1038
Elektronische ISSN: 1279-8517
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-011-0823-9

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The morphological characteristics of corticostriatal and thalamostriatal neurons and their intrastriatal terminals in rats