Nestin immunoreactivity in local neurons of the adult rat striatum after remote cortical injury.

Nestin is a marker for the neuronal and glial precursor cells and is expressed in reactive astrocytes after brain injury. Following restricted neocortical injury, we found that cells with neuronal morphology in the adult rat striatum became immunoreactive for both nestin and the neuronal marker, microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP-2), but not for the astroglial marker, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). The number of nestin-positive cells transiently increased in the striatum. Continuous administration of 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) after cortical injury did not reveal any newly generated neurons in the striatum. Double-labeling fluorescent immunocytochemistry revealed that the nestin-positive striatal cells were also substance-P-positive. These findings suggest that some factors released from the injured cortex may induce nestin immunoreactivity in striatal neurons.

Projections from the cytochrome oxidase modules of visual area V2 to the ventral posterior area in the macaque.

The ventral part of the third visual cortical complex, the ventral posterior area (VP) or V3v, is located between the ventral half of visual areas V2 and V4. Because of its location and the physiological properties of its neurons, VP has been considered to be involved in the ventral stream visual areas. The ventral stream visual areas such as V4 and TEO receive projections from the cytochrome oxidase (CO)-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions of V2; however, which CO-modules project to VP remains unclear. Moreover, it is not clear whether V1 projects to VP. We injected retrograde tracers into VP and found that VP receives projections from V2 neurons not only in the CO-rich thin stripes and CO-poor interstripe regions but also in the CO-rich thick stripes. We also confirmed the virtual absence of inputs from V1 to VP. These results support the hypothesis that VP constitutes a distinct extrastriate visual area and also suggest that, in addition to color and shape information, VP may also process visual information related to space and disparity.