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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Apr 7.
Published in final edited form as: J Comp Neurol. 2018 Dec 5;527(5):999–1011. doi: 10.1002/cne.24575

FIGURE 6. In the DCN, neurons born in the first wave of neurogenesis are large excitatory neurons and neurons generated in the second wave of neurogenesis are small inhibitory interneurons.

FIGURE 6

(a-d) Pregnant mice were injected with BrdU on E12.5 (a, a1, a2, and b) or E16.5 (c, c1, c2, and d). Whole mouse brains were harvested on P20. (a-a2 and c-c2) Coronal brain sections through the DCN were double stained for neuN (green) and BrdU (magenta) and imaged by a confocal microscope. Large neurons are indicated by white arrows and small neurons by white arrowheads. Most neurons born on E12.5 (the peak of the first neurogenesis) have large sizes (average soma diameter = 16.03 ± 0.59 μm, n = 30 BrdU-labeled neurons from three animals) while those neurons born on E16.5 (the peak of the second neurogenesis) have small sizes (average soma diameter = 7.55 ± 0.20 μm, n = 52 BrdU-labeled neurons from three animals). (b) Double immunostaining of NR2B (green) and BrdU (magenta) within the DCN indicates that the large neurons born on E12.5 are glutamatergic excitatory neurons. (d) Double immunostaining of GABA-B receptor 1 (green) and BrdU (magenta) within the DCN demonstrates that the small neurons born on E16.5 are GABAergic local circuit neurons. The axis in (a) indicates the orientation of all the sections in the figure. D, dorsal; L, lateral. Scale bar in (d) is 30 μm.