Morphometric analysis of feedforward pathways from the primary somatosensory area (S1) of rats

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1 Brain Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil
2 Institute of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil
3 Institute of Health Sciences, Federal University of Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil
4 Department of Statistics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil
5 Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.480v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Neuroscience, Anatomy and Physiology
Keywords
barrel field, Somatosensory cortex, axon terminal, feedforward networks, axon morphometry
Copyright
© 2014 de Sá et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
de Sá AL, Castro Corrêa V, Pacheco Bahia C, Dias I, Gomes Leal W, Pinho ALS, Houzel J, Picanço Diniz CW, Pereira A. 2014. Morphometric analysis of feedforward pathways from the primary somatosensory area (S1) of rats. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e480v1

Abstract

In this report, we used biotinylated dextran amine to anterogradely label individual axons projecting from primary somatosensory cortex (S1) to four cortical areas in rats, namely the secondary somatosensory (S2), the parietal ventral (PV), the perirhinal (PR), and the contralateral S1 (S1c). A major goal was to determine whether axon terminals could be classified on the basis of morphological criteria, such as the shape and density of boutons, and the shape and size of individual terminal arbors. Evidence from reconstruction of isolated axon terminal fragments (n=111) supported a degree of morphological heterogeneity. In particular, morphological parameters associated with the complexity of terminal arbors and the proportion of beaded, en passant boutons (Bp) vs. stalked boutons terminaux (Bt) were found to differ significantly. Two broad groups could be established following a discriminant function analysis across axon fragments. Both groups occurred in all four target areas, possibly consistent with a commonality of presynaptic processing of tactile information in these areas. However, more work is needed to investigate synaptic function at the single bouton level and see how this might be associated with emerging properties in the postsynaptic targets.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Morphometric Data

Morphometric data for axon terminals. Each sheet is related to a target area (S2, PV, PR, S1c). The variables are declared on column titles, axon terminal ID, number of branching points, number of synaptic boutons, number of segments, total length of segments in mm, number of bouton terminaux (Bt), number of bouton en passant (Bp)

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.480v1/supp-1