Figure 9.

Schematic diagram summarizes the overall topography of known afferent inputs to the LC. The area enclosed within the thin line denotes the LC nuclear core in the horizontal plane. Note that rostral Peri-LC tends to receive innervation from medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), bed nucleus of stria terminals (BNST), central nucleus of amygadala (CNA), nucleus of solitary tract (NTS) and ventrolateral periaqueductal area (PAG). While mPFC and PAG mainly target the rostromedial Peri-LC, and CNA mainly targets the rostrolateral Peri-LC as well as BNST and NTS project to both rostromedial and rostrolateral Peri-LC. In contrast, DR is the only known structure to exhibit a preference to the caudal juxtaependymal Peri-LC. Additionally, nucleus paragigantocellularis (PGi), nucleus prepositus hypoglossi (PrH), Barrington's nucleus and the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus appear to preferentially target the LC nuclear core. The precise distribution of afferents arising from other regions such as ventral tegmental area (VTA), median raphe (MR) and spinal cord etc. has yet to be determined. IV: 4^th ventricle. (the drawing is modified from Simpson and Lin, 2007).