Retrograde labelling of mitral/tufted cells in the mouse accessory olfactory bulb following local injections of the lipophilic tracer DiI into the vomeronasal amygdala

Abstract

It has recently become apparent that there are two classes of vomeronasal receptor neurons that project to functionally separate anterior and posterior sub-regions of the mammalian accessory olfactory bulb. However, anterograde tracing of the projections from these sub-regions, in the mouse, has revealed that the processing pathways are not segregated at the level of the vomeronasal amygdala. Both sub-regions have overlapping projections to the superficial lamina of the medial and posterior medial cortical nuclei of the amygdala. However, differential projections have been found in the opossum, in which only the posterior sub-region projects to the deeper laminae of the medial amygdala. Therefore, there may be species differences in these projections that are important for the control of reproductive behaviour. This study used an alternative approach of retrogradely tracing mitral/tufted cell projections from different nuclei of the vomeronasal amygdala back to the accessory olfactory bulb of mice. Local injections of the lipophilic tracer DiI were made into the antero-dorsal and postero-ventral divisions of the medial amygdala, and into the postero-medial cortical amygdala. In each case, provided the DiI affected the superficial lamina Ia, labelled mitral/tufted cells were found distributed throughout the anterior-posterior extent of the accessory olfactory bulb. These results confirm that mitral/tufted cells of the anterior and posterior sub-regions of the accessory olfactory bulb project to both the medial and postero-medial cortical nuclei of the amygdala. There was no evidence for differential projections from the anterior and posterior sub-regions accessory olfactory bulb in mice, as has been reported to occur in other species.