Functional Neurogenesis

And now for a journey outside (rostral, to be precise) of my comfort zone. These three pictures show new neurons in the mouse olfactory bulb at successively greater magnifications. Probably inspired by the science magazine I read as a kid that would show high mag photos of everyday objects (with corresponding low mag photos as the answers).

With a 10x objective I could capture nearly the entire bulb (saggital section) in a single field. You can see newborn BrdU+ cells (green) scattered throughout, most co-labeled with doublecortin (red). In the bottom left area you can see about a dozen glomeruli – groups of neurons that represent different odors, located just one synapse upstream of the nasal epithelium. Whereas the majority of adult-born olfactory neurons are inhibitory interneurons, a smaller number of new neurons surrounding the glomeruli (periglomerular neurons) are dopaminergic. (click on the images for full sized versions – 2048 x 2048 pixels)

Zooming in with a 20x objective:

And then with a 60x objective. I apologize this photo could have been better but I can’t spend all day on this stuff.

If I had a confocal microscope at home I’d never stop.