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Quantitative study of the Purkinje cell dendritic spines in the rat cerebellum
Author(s) -
Napper R. M. A.,
Harvey R. J.
Publication year - 1988
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.902740203
Subject(s) - dendritic spine , horseradish peroxidase , purkinje cell , cerebellum , granular layer , anatomy , spine (molecular biology) , cerebellar cortex , electron micrographs , chemistry , biology , electron microscope , neuroscience , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , enzyme , physics , hippocampal formation , optics
The number of spines on an individual Purkinje cell in the cerebellar cortex of the rat was determined by stereological methods. Investigations were based on thin section electron micrographs, freeze fracture replicas, and horseradish peroxidase labeled cells. Purkinje cell dendritic spines in our embedded material had a mean length of 1.4 ± 0.05 μm and mean neck and head diameters of 0.22 ± 0.01 μm and 0.45 ± 0.02 μm, respectively. From these dimensions, an estimate of spine volume in embedded material of 0.132 μm 3 was obtained. The density of dendritic spines in our fixed material was 8.15 × 10 8 or 7.24 × 10 8 per μl of molecular layer from volume fraction and density per mm 2 , respectively. The number of spines per linear micron of Purkinje cell spiny branchlet was 17.2 from freeze fracture and 17.6 from horseradish peroxidase labeled dendrites. These all indicate that there are between 154,000 and 175,000 spines on the dendritic tree of each Purkinje cell, considerably more than previously reported for the rat.