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In murine corticostriatal slice cultures, we studied the protective effects of the bioenergetic compound creatine on neuronal cell death induced by the mitochondrial toxin 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NP). 3-NP caused a dose-dependent neuronal degeneration accompanied by an increased lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in the cell culture medium. An increased ratio of lactate to pyruvate concentration in the medium suggested that metabolic activity shifted to anaerobic energy metabolism. These effects were predominantly observed in the 24-h recovery period after 3-NP exposure. Creatine protected against 3-NP neurotoxicity: LDH activity was reduced and aerobic respiration of pyruvate was stimulated, which resulted in lower lactate levels and less cell death. In both striatum and cortex, apoptosis in 3-NP-exposed slices was demonstrated by increased activation of the pro-apoptotic protein caspase-3 and by numerous cells exhibiting DNA fragmentation detected by the terminal transferase-mediated biotinylated-UTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL) technique. Creatine administration to the 3-NP-exposed corticostriatal slices resulted in a reduced number of TUNEL-positive cells in the recovery period. However, in the striatum, an unexpected increase of both TUNEL-positive cells and caspase-3-immunostained cells was observed in the exposure phase in the presence of creatine. In the recovery phase, caspase-3-immunostaining decreased to basal levels in both striatum and cortex. These findings suggest that 3-NP-induced neuronal degeneration in corticostriatal slices results from apoptosis that in the cortex can be prevented by creatine, while in the more vulnerable striatal cells it may lead to an accelerated and increased execution of apoptotic cell death, preventing further necrosis-related damage in this region.

Exposure of organotypic rat corticostriatal slice cultures to the mitochondrial toxin 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NP) resulted in concentration-dependent loss of cresylviolet-stained cells and increase of lactate dehydrogenase and lactate efflux into the culture medium, indicators for cell death and metabolic activity in the slices, respectively. The involvement of apoptosis in these slices was suggested by using the terminal transferase-mediated biotinylated-UTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL) technique, and immunohistochemistry for the apoptosis-related markers Bax and Bcl-2. In 3-NP-exposed slices, TUNEL-positive cells were observed in both the striatum and the cortex but in different forms: striatal neurons were either diffusely stained or showed nuclear fragmentation, cortical neurons only exhibiting nuclear fragmentation. In 3-NP-exposed slices, the pro-apoptotic protein Bax was abundantly expressed, whereas the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 was not expressed in striatal neurons. We suggest that both apoptosis and necrosis are involved in the 3-NP-treated slices, apoptosis as well as necrosis in the striatum and apoptosis in the cortex., (Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.)

The gyri and sulci of the human brain were defined by pioneers such as Louis-Pierre Gratiolet and Alexander Ecker, and extensified by, among others, Dejerine (1895) and von Economo and Koskinas (1925). Extensive discussions of the cerebral sulci and their variations were presented by Ono et al. (1990), Duvernoy (1992), Tamraz and Comair (2000), and Rhoton (2007). An anatomical parcellation of the spatially normalized single high resolution T1 volume provided by the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI; Collins, 1994; Collins et al., 1998) was used for the macroscopical labeling of functional studies (Tzourio-Mazoyer et al., 2002; Rolls et al., 2015). In the standard atlas of the human brain by Mai et al. (2016), the terminology from Mai and Paxinos (2012) is used. It contains an extensively analyzed individual brain hemisphere in the MNI-space. A recent revision of the terminology on the central nervous system in the Terminologia Anatomica (TA, 1998) was made by the Working Group Neuroanatomy of the Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT) of the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA), and posted online as the Terminologia Neuroanatomica (TNA, 2017: http://FIPAT.library.dal.ca) as the official FIPAT terminology. This review deals with the various terminologies for the cerebral gyri and sulci, aiming for a common terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights from the article: Two papers deal with white matter tracts, which in the TNA follows the Swanson and Bota ([4]) classification as central roots, intrinsic tracts, commissural connections and long tracts, divided into ascending and descending tracts: (1) Baud et al. address a new scheme for the representation of white matter in the CNS. In this approach, white matter is directly attached to the CNS, and no longer considered part of the brain segments. The new classification of white matter tracts selects the origin as the primary criterion and the type of tract as the secondary criterion. Thalamus, cerebral cortex, terminology, neural progenitor cells, neuron types, prosomeric model, tracts.

The development of the central nervous system can be divided into a number of phases, each of which is characterized by particular developmental disorders. In recent years, much progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms by which the forebrain develops and in our understanding of major developmental disorders such as holoprosencephaly and neuronal migration disorders. In this general introduction to this symposium the major stages in the development of the forebrain, its regionalization and the genes involved, and some of the developmental disorders derailing cortical development with subsequent damage to the main cortical fiber connections (pyramidal tract and corpus callosum) are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]