摘要:
In the foregoing discussion, the views expressed are as follows. Two neuroanatomical interests of great importance for neurophysiology concern the connexions of a brain region and those of its constituent neurones. The first class of connexions may be investigated by 4 techniques.o(1)Wallerian degeneration of the interrupted fibre: This is best revealed by the degeneration-specific silver-impregnation of Natua, since other, fully impregnating, silver methods, e.g. Glees, have the disadvantage that, before the fibre can appear fragmented and thus as degenerating, the continuity-maintaining neurofibrils must first disappear.(2)Bouton changes: These should accompany the fibre's Wallerian degeneration,(3)Retrograde somatic changes: These may be classified: (a) no apparent alteration, which may occur when the injury is to a process of the nerve cell distant from the soma, or when no cell process has been damaged; (b) a degeneration leading to the death and disappearance of the cell, which means that the stem fibre is involved in the lesion; (c) an atrophy in a still viable cell, which may be interpreted as the result of damage to one or so of several collaterals, or as a transneuronal effect. It should also be borne in mind that poor fixation (by immersion) can produce, as an artifact, an apparent variety in the appearance of cells.(4)Trans-synaptic atrophy: before this can furnish evidence of connexions, its own origin should be explained. In the monkey's lateral geniculate body, the transneuronal atrophy occurs at the same time as the development of the giant end-bulbs of the optic fibres. Perhaps the synthesis of the neurofibrils in these clubs requires an unusually large amount of amino acids from an adjacent glial cell, which then has correspondingly less for delivery to the synapse's host nerve cell. The prompt atrophy in the monkey's LGB (and in newborn animals) would thus be not a disuse atrophy, but the result of parasitic synapses. There is no really adequate e