A Survey of Current Neuroanatomical Tracing Techniques

This chapter provides a systematic description of neuroanatomical tracing methods, with a brush of history. Tracing can be based on uptake and transport of tracer in living neurons but can also be based on physical diffusion in living neurons after intracellular injection of tracer or, in fixed tissue as is the case of Golgi silver staining, based on complex anorganic chemical reactions. Because of the special fixation status of human brain tissue, the physicochemical methods are prominent with this kind of nervous tissue. Nowadays, the transport methods enjoy popularity in animal connectivity models because they produce fast and decisive results in terms of specific connectivity of functional systems. Transport-based tracing methods are best suited to visualize long-axon projections. For the study of short projection axons and interneurons, more sophisticated methods need to be applied such as pericellular injection or intracellular filling with dye after neurophysiological recording in living slice preparations or in vivo.
Source: Springer protocols feed by Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news