Table 1.

Parameters included in the morphological analysis of cornu ammonis 1 pyramidal neurons. Vitamin C deficiency was expected to cause aberrant neuron morphology either directly or through subsequent oxidative stress thereby decreasing dendrite branching and length of cornu ammonis 1 pyramidal neurons causing an overall decrease in filament length. Furthermore, deficiency induced spine degeneration was expected to reduce total spine numbers and spine density, while also affecting the morphology of the spines. The change in spine morphology inflicted by deficiency was hypothesized to cause a shift towards a more immature/degenerated state of the dendritic spines with decreases in volume, area, diameter and shortening of the neck. Spine length could be increased due to an increase of immature filopodia or decreased due to degeneration [54,55]. The descriptions of the morphological parameters are based on descriptions in the Imaris manual provided by Bitplane.

Parameter	Explanation	Expected Outcome of Vitamin C Deficiency
Dendrite length	The sum of the lengths of all dendrites on a neuron	↓
Dendrite diameter	The mean diameter within a dendrite	↔ or ↓
Dendrite volume	The volume of a dendrite	↔ or ↓
Branch numbers	The number of dendrite branches on an neuron	↓
Spine number	The number of spines on the entire neuron	↓
Spine density	The number of spines per 10 μm dendrite	↓
Filament length	The sum of dendrite length and spine length	↓
Spine length	The length of the spines	↑ or ↓
Spine diameter	The mean of the spine diameter	↓
Spine area	The surface area of the spine	↓
Spine volume	The volume of the spine	↓
Spine neck length	The length of the spine neck	↓
Spine neck diameter	The diameter of the spine neck	↓
Spine neck volume	The volume of the spine neck	↓