Influence of Neonatal Undernutrition on the Development of Rat Cerebral Cortex: A Microchemical Study

Abstract

Neurochemists have assembled a large body of data on developing whole brain in many species, including man. Although of great value, these observations do not permit close morphologic correlations because developing brain matures at different times in various regions. Information derived from analyses of whole brain, therefore, is a summation of different events, and the specific changes underlying structural transformation of any one region may be obscured. Therefore, we have confined our observations to the somatosensory area of developing rat cerebrum, combining microchemical techniques with histologic examination to study the differentiation of neuronal cytoplasm, proliferation of axons and dendrites, and the formation of synapses and myelin (1,2).