Volume 113, Number 1, 48-56, DOI: 10.1007/BF02454141

Parvalbumin-containing cells of the angular portion of the vertical limb terminate on calbindin-immunoreactive neurons located at the border between the lateral and medial septum of the rat

Jozsef Kiss, Zsolt Borhegyi, Agnes Csaky, Gabor Szeiffert and Csaba Leranth

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Abstract

In the septal complex, both parvalbumin and calbindin neurons cocontain GABA. In the same area, a large number of GABA-GABA synaptic connections can be observed. In order to further characterize their neurochemical nature, as well as the extrinsic and/or intrinsic origin of these GABA terminals, the following experiments were performed: (1) correlated light- and electronmicroscopic double immunostaining for calbindin and parvalbumin on septal sections of control rats; (2) light microscopic parvalbumin immunostaining of septal sections after surgical isolation (5 days) of the septum from its telencephalic or (3) hypothalamic afferents; and (4) parvalbumin immunostaining of sections prepared from the entire brain 2 days following horseradish peroxidase injection into the border between the lateral and medial septum. The results demonstrated that: (1) in a well-circumscribed, vertically longitudinal area located between the lateral and medial septum, 0.1–0.6 mm anterior to the bregma, a group of calbindin-containing, nonsomatospiny neurons are surrounded by parvalbumin-immunoreactive baskets; (2) these basket-forming axon terminals establish symmetric synaptic contacts with their targets; and (3) their cells of origin are not in the medial septum, but in the angular porition of the vertical limb. These observations indicate that a portion of the septal complex GABA-GABA synaptic connections represent functional interaction between two different types of GABAergic neurons. The presynaptic GABAergic neurons contain parvalbumin, and the postsynaptic GABAergic cells are immunoreactive for calbindin. Furthermore, a population of the medial septum/diagonal band parvalbumin neurons promect only to the hippocampus, while others, which may also send axons to the hippocampus, terminate on lateral septum calbindin cells as well.

Key words  GABA - Double immunostaining - Retrograde tracing - Diagonal band - Disinhibition - Rat

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