Different distributions of calbindin and calretinin immunostaining across the medial and dorsal divisions of the mouse medial geniculate body

Abstract

We studied the distributions of calretinin and calbindin immunoreactivity in subdivisions of the mouse medial geniculate body and the adjacent paralaminar nuclei. We found that the vast majority of labeled cells in the dorsal division of the medial geniculate body were immunoreactive for calbindin only, whereas most of the remaining labeled cells were double-labeled. Very few calretinin+ only cells were observed. By contrast, we observed significant proportions of calbindin+ only, calretinin+ only and double-labeled cells in the medial division of the medial geniculate body. Further, the distributions of calbindin-only, calretinin-only and double-labeled cells did not differ between the medial division of the medial geniculate body, the suprageniculate nucleus, the peripeduncular nucleus and the posterior intralaminar nucleus. We found essentially no somatic staining for either calbindin or calretinin in the ventral division of the medial geniculate body. These data suggest that there are distinct neurochemical differences between the two nonlemniscal auditory thalamic nuclei. In addition, these data extend previous observations that the medial division of the medial geniculate body shares many properties with the paralaminar group of nuclei.

The insular auditory field receives input from the lemniscal subdivision of the auditory thalamus in mice

“…L,N). These observations are consistent with previous studies in rodents (Friauf, ; Cruikshank et al, ; Llano and Sherman, ; Lu et al, ). Merging images of the retrogradely labeled cells (Fig.…”

“…The antibody stained CB in neurons on 30‐μm coronal rat brain tissue sections (manufacturer's technical information). The antibody also stained the MGd, posterior intralaminar nucleus (PIN), and MGm, in contrast to a weak staining in the MGv in accord with previous reports (Friauf, ; Cruikshank et al, ; Llano and Sherman, ; Lu et al, ).…”

“…Sections from single tracer‐injected brains were subjected to cytochrome oxidase (CYO) histochemistry (Gonzalez‐Lima and Cada, ; Anderson and Linden, ; Hackett et al, ) and immunohistochemistry for the calcium binding proteins parvalbumin (PV) (Cruikshank et al, ; Llano and Sherman, ) and calbindin (CB) (Friauf, ; Cruikshank et al, ; Llano and Sherman, ; Lu et al, ) to identify the MGv and other MGB subdivisions. For CYO histochemistry, sections were incubated for 2–5 hours at 37°C in 75 mM PB containing 0.5 mg/ml diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride, 0.75 mg/ml cytochrome c, and 75 mg/ml sucrose (Anderson et al, ).…”

Thalamic and cortical pathways supporting auditory processing

“…A complementary model of thalamocortical organization proposed by Jones (2001) is based on the observations that MGB nuclei (and other thalamic nuclei) differ in their expression of calcium-binding proteins that correlate with anatomically distinct thalamocortical projection patterns (Hashikawa et al, 1991; Jones, 2003; Lu, Llano, & Sherman, 2009; Molinari et al, 1995). In particular, parvalbumin-expressing neurons are found to concentrate heavily in the ventral division of the MGB and project to the middle layers of a targeted cortical area, e.g.…”

Adenosine A1 Receptor mRNA Expression by Neurons and Glia in the Auditory Forebrain

“…The division between MGm and the suprageniculate nucleus (Sg) was approximated in figures, but their cell counts were combined, as definitive borders between the two divisions were ambiguous in these preparations, and because transcript distributions were typically uniform across the region. The difficulties in delineation of Sg in mouse have been noted previously, (Jones, ; Watson et al, ), and identification varies across studies (Cruikshank et al, ; Anderson et al, ; Lu et al, ; Anderson and Linden, ; Marquez‐Legorreta et al, ).…”