Early postnatal development of basolateral amygdala in kitten: a Golgi morphometric analysis.
The development of the lateral, basomedial and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala in 1-28 day old kittens was studied using Golgi morphometric methods. The major finding of this study is the growth of neurons within each of the nuclei of the amygdala examined occurs during the same time period, between 5-14 and 16-18 days of postnatal age in the cat. This growth occurs in slightly different ways in each of the nuclei. In the lateral nucleus, total dendritic length, average dendritic length and radius of the dendritic field increased significantly. In the basolateral nucleus number of branches per dendrite increased as well as total dendritic length and radius of the dendritic field. The least amount of growth occurred in the basomedial nucleus in which only total dendritic length increased. These increases in dendritic length were associated with qualitative observations of increasing maturity. In the first two weeks of age, the most frequently encountered cell type in all nuclei was pyramidal to multangular in outline with short dendrites and few dendritic spines. By 2 weeks of age, two cell types were easily distinguished, a multangular cell with numerous spines and a cell which had more rounded contours and a few dendritic spines. With age dendritic beading decreased and filopodia were no longer apparent.
D000344:Afferent Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D000375:Aging; D000679:Amygdala / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D000818:Animals; D001369:Axons / Q000648:ultrastructure; D002415:Cats; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D003712:Dendrites / Q000648:ultrastructure; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology / Q000648:ultrastructure