Entry of peroxidase into neurons of the central and peripheral nervous systems from extracerebral and cerebral blood

Abstract

Autonomic preganglionic, sensory, and lower motoneuron perikarya within the central nervous system, as well as cell bodies with axons projecting to the circumventricular organs, are retrogradely labeled with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) delivered to their axon terminals by cerebral and extracerebral blood. Subsequent to vascular injection of HRP into mice, blood-borne peroxidase passes across permeable vessels in muscle, ganglia, and in all circumventricular organs except for the subcommissural organ in which no leak could be discerned. Brain parenchyma adjacent to each of the permeable circumventricular organs quickly becomes inundated with the protein. By four to six hours post-injection, this extracellular HRP reaction product has disappeared, and by eight hours perikarya of specific hypothalamic nuclei contain HRP-positive granules indicative of the intra-axonal retrograde transport of the protein. Hypothalamic neurons so labeled are presumed to send axons to such circumventricular organs as the median eminence or neurohypophysis and include neurons of the magnocellular neurosecretory supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei, the accessory magnocellular nuclei, the parvicellular arcuate nucleus, and a band of periventricular cells extending rostrally into the medial preoptic area. Labeled somata are also adjacent to the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis and in the vertical limb of the nucleus of the diagonal band of Broca. No similarly labeled cell bodies were identified near the subfornical organ.