Single Nigrostriatal Dopaminergic Neurons Form Widely Spread and Highly Dense Axonal Arborizations in the Neostriatum

By Wakoto Matsuda, T. Furuta, KouichiC . Nakamura, H. Hioki, F. Fujiyama, R. Arai, Takeshi Kaneko. Journal of Neuroscience, 2009

791 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The axonal arbors of single nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons were visualized with a viral vector expressing membrane-targeted green fluorescent protein in rat brain. All eight reconstructed tyrosine hydroxylase-positive dopaminergic neurons possessed widely spread and highly dense axonal arborizations in the neostriatum. All of them emitted very little axon collateral arborization outside of the striatum except for tiny arborization in the external pallidum. The striatal axonal bush of each reconstructed dopaminergic neuron covered 0.45–5.7% (mean ± SD = 2.7 ± 1.5%) of the total volume of the neostriatum. Furthermore, all the dopaminergic neurons innervated both striosome and matrix compartments of the neostriatum, although each neuron's arborization tended to favor one of these compartments. Our findings demonstrate that individual dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra can broadcast a dopamine signal and exert strong influence over a large number of striatal neurons. This divergent signaling should be a key to the function of the nigrostriatal system in dopamine-based learning and suggests that neurodegeneration of individual nigral neurons can affect multiple neurons in the striatum. Thus, these results would also contribute to understanding the clinicopathology of Parkinson's disease and related syndromes.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e189817e86c08d2eb642762b7a6c086e43db1d6

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Citations in the corpus

Dopaminergic modulation of synaptic transmission in cortex and striatum (2012, background): “Indeed, individual SNc neurons extend impressive axons of half a meter in total length that densely ramify throughout up to 1 mm 3 of tissue (Matsuda et al., 2009).”
Goal-directed and habitual control in the basal ganglia: implications for Parkinson's disease (2010, background): “The main nigrostriatal projection maintains a general medial to lateral topograph”
Human Reinforcement Learning Subdivides Structured Action Spaces by Learning Effector-Specific Values (2009, background): “, 2000), in which relatively few dopamine neurons innervate a very large territory of forebrain (Schultz, 1998; Matsuda et al., 2009).”
The energy cost of action potential propagation in dopamine neurons: clues to susceptibility in Parkinson's disease (2013, methodology): “Additionally, the axonal arborizations had been initially implemented using a thicker axon branch diameter (0.82 ± 0.11 µm) (Matsuda et al., 2009) than those used in the present study (0.34 ± 0.14 µm).”
Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data. (2015, background): “The widespread and diverging anatomical dopamine projections to postsynaptic structures show limited topography (FIGURE 17A) (177, 251, 342).”
Dopamine release in the basal ganglia (2011, background): “As noted, DA neurons form impressive axon arbors within striatum, with total axonal lengths from individual rat nigrostriatal DA neurons extending up to 780,000 μm (78 cm) (Matsuda et al., 2009).”
Functional neuroanatomy of the basal ganglia. (2012, positive): “In the rat, one dopaminergic axon is estimated to innervate some 75,000 MSNs, and one MSN is under the influence of 95 – 194 dopaminergic neurons on average (Matsuda et al. 2009).”