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An autoradiographic and electron microscopic study of retino-hypothalamic connections

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Summary

Retino-hypothalamic connections have been studied autoradiographically in the rat, guinea pig, rabbit, cat and monkey following the intravitreal injection of 3H-leucine or 3H-proline, and electron microscopically following unilateral eye removal in the guinea pig and monkey. In each of the species examined evidence has been found for a direct projection from the retina to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, but to no other region of the hypothalamus. The projection to the suprachiasmatic nucleus is always bilateral (even in the albino guinea pig, in which all other components of the retinal projection are crossed) but from grain counts in our autoradiographs it appears that the input to the contralateral nucleus is about twice as heavy as that on the ipsilateral side. Most of the retinal fibers appear to terminate within the ventral part of the nucleus where they form asymmetric synapses either upon small dendritic branches or dendritic spines. The possible role of this retinal projection to the suprachiasmatic nucleus in mediating a variety of light-induced neuroendocrine responses is discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Anita E. Hendrickson, Norma Wagoner & W. Maxwell Cowan

  2. Department of Anatomy, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Anita E. Hendrickson, Norma Wagoner & W. Maxwell Cowan

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  1. Anita E. Hendrickson
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  2. Norma Wagoner
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  3. W. Maxwell Cowan
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Additional information

This work was supported in part by Grants 5 PO1 EY-00491 and 5 RO1 EY-00599 from the National Eye Institute, by U.S.P.H.S. Grant HD 02274, and by Regional Primate Center Grant RR 00166.

We should like to thank Mrs. Lue-Vurn Bell, Mrs. Bente Noble, Mrs. Gay Anderson and Mrs. Ludelle Moe for their excellent technical assistance, and Miss Lynn Rogers for her help with the illustrations.

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Hendrickson, A.E., Wagoner, N. & Cowan, W.M. An autoradiographic and electron microscopic study of retino-hypothalamic connections. Z.Zellforsch 135, 1–26 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00307084

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