Transneuronal Cell Degeneration in the Olfactory Bulb shown by the Golgi Method

Abstract

THE Golgi technique has been used extensively to investigate the detailed morphology of individual neurones in normal material of the central nervous system, but the lack of understanding of the principles which underlie the selective impregnation of only a few cells and the well known capriciousness of the method have tended to preclude its experimental application. This report concerns the change in the appearance of nerve cells and their processes shown by this method during the early stages of transneuronal degeneration. Cells in the olfactory bulb which have undergone this form of degeneration because of interruption of the olfactory afferent fibres do not impregnate as well with the Golgi method as the cells in the opposite normal bulb¹, and when the pyramidal neurones in certain areas of the cerebral cortex are deprived of some of their afferent fibres they may show diminished impregnation of either their finer dendritic branches or of a proportion of their spines^2–4. In most of these investigations the appearance of the cells has been studied after relatively long survival periods, and there is little evidence³ to indicate the time of onset of these changes and how they are correlated with the observations made in sections stained by the Nissl and reduced silver method.