Intraocular grafts of fetal rat spinal cord: a Golgi study of neuronal morphology and organization.

A modified Golgi staining technique was used to study the neuronal morphology and organization of the fetal rat spinal cord which had developed in the anterior eye chamber of adult rat hosts. Individual neurons in spinal cord grafts displayed profiles which were strikingly similar to previously described spinal cord neurons stained in situ. Further, for the population of 464 graft neurons studied, the distributions of average cell body diameters and numbers of primary dendrites were comparable to those of previously published in situ studies. An internal organization of graft neurons was also observed. Similar-shaped neurons were grouped together, which made it possible to identify different regions within a graft, such that a comparison could be made with normal spinal cord morphology. These observations provide further evidence that the intraocular spinal cord graft is a suitable model for studying spinal cord growth, development, and plasticity and indicate that the Golgi stain may be useful for the quantitative study of concomitant changes in neuronal morphology.