title: The morphology and cytoarchitecture of the red nucleus of the one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius).
abstract: The red nucleus of the camel was delineated and reconstructed. For this purpose, three camel brain stems were used for making serial sections in the transverse, sagittal and horizontal planes after double embedding in celloidin-paraffin. All sections were mounted. Nissl and nissl-myelin methods were used for staining. The red nucleus was reconstructed by using a Leitz drawing device; it was seen to have the shape and form of an egg with a flattened medial surface. The red nucleus measures 8.35 mm (length) X 5.00 mm (width) X 3.70 mm (height) and extends from just caudal to the oculomotor nerve fibres to the fasciculus retroflexus rostrally. Five cell types were seen namely, giant, large, medium, small and minimus. The red nucleus shows a larger rostral parvocellular and a smaller caudal magnocellular divisions. The parvocellular division shows three subdivisions namely, the pars veniralis, pars dorsomedialis and cornu lateralis. The red nucleus and its giant cells are the largest reported in literature so far; the giant cells are quite similar to the large ventral spinal motor neurons. The camel cerebellum is very big and this fact along with the greatly developed red nucleus and rubrospinal tract may account for the great muscular control and coordination necessary for the camel to survive in the peculiar desert environment, it is exposed to.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002162:Camelus / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000145:classification / Q000166:cytology; D012012:Red Nucleus / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000166:cytology*