Aspects of the quantitative analysis of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
We address three problems concerning the quantitative analysis of nerve cell distribution in the cerebral cortex: (i) preparatory tissue deformation (shrinkage); (ii) difficulties in differentiating between small neurons and astroglia; and (iii) the bias introduced by the counting method. We found that staining with Richardson's solution led to no shrinkage in Vibratome-cut sections of aldehyde-fixed rat brains, but did result in staining of the neurons and left the glial cells unstained. This was in striking contrast to Nissl staining which introduced a linear shrinkage of 20-30% and stained all kinds of cortical cells indiscriminately. A computer-based unbiased counting method was implemented by taking advantage of the stereological procedure referred to as the 'optical disector' (Gundersen, H.J.G. (1986) Stereology of arbitrary particles, J. Microsc., 143: 3-45).
Skoglund
T S
TS
Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Göteborg, Sweden. skoglund@mednet.gu.se
Pascher
R
R
Berthold
C H
CH
D000818:Animals; D002452:Cell Count / Q000379:methods; D048429:Cell Size; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000166:cytology*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D009562:Nissl Bodies / Q000737:chemistry; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013194:Staining and Labeling / Q000379:methods