Summary
We have studied the maturation of non-pyramidal cells in layers II–VI of the visual cortex of albino rats from birth to maturity, using Golgi-Cox and rapid Golgi preparations. At birth, non-pyramidall cells are sparse, immature and concentrated in the deep part of the cortical plate: their number increases towards the end of the first week but they remain sparse and immature in the upper part of the cortical plate. During the second postnatal week, the number, size and extent of dendritic and axonal branching of these cells undergo considerable increases and the cells become conspicuous in layer IV and apparent in the supragranular layers: this “growth spurt’ occurs just after (and may be related to) the arrival and establishment in the cortex during the second half of the first postnatal week, of extrinsic afferents.
During the third postnatal week, most of the cells complete their maturation. At the end of this week, the number of spinous cells is greater and the spine density of some cells is higher than in the adult, falling to adult values during the fourth postnatal week. It is noteworthy that the non-pyramidal cells appear to reach maturity at about the same time in all the layers studied, and at the same time as the pyramidal cells with which they are associated. These observations are not in accord with the prevalent view that non-pyramidal cells complete their differentiation much later than pyramidal cells.
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Parnavelas, J.G., Bradford, R., Mounty, E.J. et al. The development of non-pyramidal neurons in the visual cortex of the rat. Anat Embryol 155, 1–14 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00315726
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00315726