Organization of the sources of reticulospinal projections in the chicken by means of a confocal laser scanning microscope.
To investigate the manner of reticulospinal projections in chickens, two different fluorescent dyes (Fast-Blue and Diamidino-Yellow) were injected into the lumbar and sacral segments. Results showed that the main projections to the spinal segments are clearly different for the pons and medulla. The main source of the medulospinal projections was in the ventral reticular formation, and the projections from the dorsal reticular formation were sporadic. On the other hand, the main pontine projections arose from the dorsolateral tegmentum and they projected to the sacral segments. In contrast, projections to the lumbar segments were somewhat more dominant in the ventromedial tegmentum than in the dorsolateral tegmentum. Double projection neurons were observed in the ventrolateral reticular formation and dorsolateral tegmentum where there were many cells of origin of the spinal descending projections. The reticulospinal projections manner of birds was organized dorsoventrally, and it was comparable with that of mammals.
D000578:Amidines; D000818:Animals; D001370:Axonal Transport; D001717:Birds; D001933:Brain Stem / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D002645:Chickens / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D006735:Horseradish Peroxidase; D008297:Male; D008322:Mammals; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal / Q000379:methods; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology
D000578:Amidines; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; C031455:diamidino compound 253-50; C037945:diamidino yellow; D006735:Horseradish Peroxidase