Figure 6.

Putative Glossopharyngeal Nerve Synaptic Site. A contact between the glossopharyngeal (IX) nerve (blue) and the same rNTS-PBN projection neuron dendrite (green; as in Figure 4) can be visualized with high-magnification confocal microscopy. (A) Lower magnification reveals the location of the apposition on the dendritic tree (dashed box represent the area of interest for the other panels). This contact occurs on the further distal portions of the dendritic tree. (B) This segment of the dendrite and surrounding afferent label are then visualized in a 3-dimensional rendering. The overlapping region of the two fluorophores can be seen as a teal band at the contact zone. (C–F) Other examples of 3-D renderings of IX putative synaptic sites (white arrows) onto ascending projection neuron dendrites display the same characteristic yellow contact band. Touching processes without displaying fluorophore overlap (black arrows) were not considered to be putative synaptic sites, as due to fluorescent spread the processes were likely separated by at least 150 nm (the resolution of the images). Note that in C–F, CT processes were removed to aid in visualization of IX putative synaptic sites. Scale in A = 10 μm, Scale in B–F = 3 μm.