| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
JINNO Shozo KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Medical Science Department of Anatomy, Assistant Professor, 大学院・医学研究院, 助手 (10325524)
FUKUDA Takaichi KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Medical Science Department of Anatomy, Associate Professor, 大学院・医学研究院, 講師 (50253414)
AIKA Yusuke KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Medical Science Department of Anatomy, Associate Professor, 大学院・医学研究院, 講師 (50021415)
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| Research Abstract |
In this study we analyzed the structural organization of the cortical regions, that is, main olfactory bulb(MOB;paleocortex), hippocampus(archicortex) and so-called cerebral cortex(neocortex). We immunohistochemically examined the organization of the MOB In 7 mammalian species including moles, hedgehogs, tree shrews, bats and mice as well as laboratory musk shrews and rats. In this comparative study, we focused our investigation on two points : 1)whether nidi, particular spheroidal synaptic regions subjacent to glomeruli, that we previously reported in the laboratory musk shrew MOBs, are also present in other animals, and 2)whether the compartmental organization of glomeruli and two types of periglomerular cells we proposed in the rat MOBs, are general in other animals. We confirmed the presence of nidi in mole MOB and the compartmental organization of glomeruli and two types of periglomerular cells in all animals examined, which thus can be considered to be common and important organizational principles of the MOBs.
In the hippocampus we performed quantitative analyses of chemically defined GABAergic neurons and astrocytes by means of a modern stereological method, optical disector using the con focal laser scanning light microscopy. In the series of our quantitative analyses, we revealed the numerical densities and the laminar and axial differences in the distribution of GABAergic neurons containing various calcium binding proteins, neuronal nitric oxide synthase and various neuropeptides as well as astrocytes.
In addition we examined neuronal gap junctions, morphological correlates of electrical coupling, in the MOB, hippocampus and various regions of the neocortex. Our analyses on gap junctions revealed that gap junctions are rather frequent between several types of neurons ; those gap junctions appeared to interlink neuronal processes.
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