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Identification of bladder and colon afferents in the nodose ganglia of male rats
Author(s) -
Herrity April N.,
Rau Kristofer K.,
Petruska Jeffrey C.,
Stirling David P.,
Hubscher Charles H.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of comparative neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 209
eISSN - 1096-9861
pISSN - 0021-9967
DOI - 10.1002/cne.23629
Subject(s) - biology , identification (biology) , nodose ganglion , neuroscience , anatomy , vagus nerve , ecology , stimulation
The sensory neurons innervating the urinary bladder and distal colon project to similar regions of the central nervous system and often are affected simultaneously by various diseases and disorders, including spinal cord injury. Anatomical and physiological commonalities between the two organs involve the participation of shared spinally derived pathways, allowing mechanisms of communication between the bladder and colon. Prior electrophysiological data from our laboratory suggest that the bladder also may receive sensory innervation from a nonspinal source through the vagus nerve, which innervates the distal colon as well. The present study therefore aimed to determine whether anatomical evidence exists for vagal innervation of the male rat urinary bladder and to assess whether those vagal afferents also innervate the colon. Additionally, the relative contribution to bladder and colon sensory innervation of spinal and vagal sources was determined. By using lipophilic tracers, neurons that innervated the bladder and colon in both the nodose ganglia (NG) and L6/S1 and L1/L2 dorsal root ganglia (DRG) were quantified. Some single vagal and spinal neurons provided dual innervation to both organs. The proportions of NG afferents labeled from the bladder did not differ from spinal afferents labeled from the bladder when considering the collective population of total neurons from either group. Our results demonstrate evidence for vagal innervation of the bladder and colon and suggest that dichotomizing vagal afferents may provide a neural mechanism for cross‐talk between the organs. J. Comp. Neurol. 522:3667–3682, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.