Figure 3.

Striatal interneurons expressing choline acetyltransferase (ChAT). There were only subtle differences in the distribution of ChAT+ neurons between normal controls (A) and DYT1 mutant mice (B). There were no obvious differences in the morphology of these neurons between control (C) and mutant mice (D), although those of mutants were slightly larger. Stereological measures for the cell size (E) and regional distribution (F–G) represent average values ± SEM in controls (black bar) and mutants (white bar). A histogram showing the size distributions in bins of 250 μm³ as percent of total cells suggests a shift of the entire mutant cell population to larger sizes compared to controls, rather than a small subpopulation of very large cells. For the dorso-ventral and medio-lateral distributions, all neurons were counted at the level of the anterior commissure split into 4 quadrants: dorso-lateral (DL), dorso-medial (DM), ventro-lateral (VL) and ventro-medial (VM). ChAT+ neuron densities were 22% higher in the DM of mutants compared to normal mice (F). For rostro-caudal distributions (RC), stereological counts were analyzed according to anterior-posterior levels from bregma at +1.5~+0.9 mm (RC1), +0.7~+0.1 mm (RC2), −0.1~−0.7 mm (RC3) and −0.9~−2.0 mm (RC4). The distribution of ChAT+ neurons was normal in mutants (G). Asterisks denote statistical significance at p<0.05.