Neuroanatomical organization of the cholinergic system in the central nervous system of a basal actinopterygian fish, the senegal bichir Polypterus senegalus

Polypterid bony fishes are believed to be basal to other living ray‐finned fishes, and their brain organization is therefore critical in providing information as to primitive neural characters that existed in the earliest ray‐finned fishes. The cholinergic system has been characterized in more advanced ray‐finned fishes, but not in polypterids. In order to establish which cholinergic neural centers characterized the earliest ray‐finned fishes, the distribution of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) is described in Polypterus and compared with the distribution of this molecule in other ray‐finned fishes. Cell groups immunoreactive for ChAT were observed in the hypothalamus, the habenula, the optic tectum, the isthmus, the cranial motor nuclei, and the spinal motor column. Cholinergic fibers were observed in both the telencephalic pallium and the subpallium, in the thalamus and pretectum, in the optic tectum and torus semicircularis, in the mesencephalic tegmentum, in the cerebellar crest, in the solitary nucleus, and in the dorsal column nuclei. Comparison of the data within a segmental neuromeric context indicates that the cholinergic system in polypterid fishes is generally similar to that in other ray‐finned fishes, but cholinergic‐positive neurons in the pallium and subpallium, and in the thalamus and cerebellum, of teleosts appear to have evolved following the separation of polypterids and other ray‐finned fishes. J. Comp. Neurol. 521:24–49, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.