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Morphological Diversity of GABAergic and Cholinergic Interneurons in the Striatal Dorsolateral and Ventromedial Regions of Rats

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Abstract

The striatum plays a fundamental role in sensorimotor and cognitive functions of the body, and different sub-regions control different physiological functions. The striatal interneurons play important roles in the striatal function, yet their specific functions are not clearly elucidated so far. The present study aimed to investigate the morphological properties of the GABAergic interneurons expressing neuropeptide Y (NPY), calretinin (Cr), and parvalbumin (Parv) as well as the cholinergic interneurons expressing choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) in the striatal dorsolateral (DL) and ventromedial (VM) regions of rats using immunohistochemistry and Western blot. The present results showed that the somatic size of Cr+ was the smallest, while ChAT+ was the largest among the four types of interneurons. There was no regional difference in neuronal somatic size of all types of interneurons. Cr+ and Parv+ neurons were differentially distributed in the striatum. Moreover, Parv+ had the longest primary dendrites in the DL region, while NPY+ had the longest ones in the VM region of striatum. But there was regional difference in the length of primary dendrites of Parv. The numbers of primary dendrites of Parv+ were the largest in both DL and VM regions of striatum. Both Cr+ and Parv+ primary dendrites displayed regional difference in the striatum. Western blot further confirmed the regional differences in the protein expression level of Cr and Parv. Hence, the present study indicates that GABAergic and cholinergic interneurons might be involved in different physiological functions based on their morphological and distributional diversity in different regions of the rat striatum.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Science Foundations of China (Nos. 31070941, 30770679, 20831006) and the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (973 Program, No. 2010CB530004).

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, 74 Zhongshan Rd 2, Guangzhou, 510080, People’s Republic of China

    Yuxin Ma, Qiqi Feng, Lisi OuYang, Shuhua Mu, Bingbing Liu, Youlan Li, Si Chen & Wanlong Lei

  2. Department of Anatomy, School of Basic Medicine, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Yuxin Ma

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  1. Yuxin Ma
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  2. Qiqi Feng
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  3. Lisi OuYang
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  4. Shuhua Mu
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  5. Bingbing Liu
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  6. Youlan Li
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  7. Si Chen
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  8. Wanlong Lei
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Correspondence to Wanlong Lei.

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Yuxin Ma and Qiqi Feng have contributed equally to this article.

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Ma, Y., Feng, Q., OuYang, L. et al. Morphological Diversity of GABAergic and Cholinergic Interneurons in the Striatal Dorsolateral and Ventromedial Regions of Rats. Cell Mol Neurobiol 34, 351–359 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10571-013-0019-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10571-013-0019-4

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