The aim of the present study is to analyse unmyelinated nerve fibres of the human lesser splanchnic nerve in relation to the ageing process. With the help of an image-analyser, we examined 30 human lesser splanchnic nerves. The analysis was conducted with the use of a new staining method that makes it possible to discriminate various structures of the nervous tissue. Our report provides for the...

The distribution, as well as the morphological characteristics of adrenergic and cholinergic nerve fibres was studied in the pancreas of the hen and the cock. The presence of numerous adrenergic and moderately numerous cholinergic structures was revealed in the organ. They were seen as nerve fibre bundles or single nerve fibres located in the vicinity of blood vessels and exocrine ducts, as wel...

Using an in vitro nerve preparation, we have studied the relative electrophysiological properties of myelinated and unmyelinated nerve fibres in the vagus nerve of 1-, 9- and 36-month-old rabbits and their sensitivity to local anaesthetic. The baseline (values before infusion of local anaesthetic) mean amplitude and conduction velocity (CV) of the compound action potential (APc) were recorded a...

1. Photic stimulation of the mature eye of Strombus can evoke in the optic nerve 'on' activity in numerous small afferent fibres and repetitive 'off' bursts of afferent impulses in a smaller number of larger fibres. 2. Synchronous invasion of the eye by electrically evoked impulses in small optic nerve fibres (apparently the 'on' afferents, antidromically activated) can evoke a burst of impulse...

THE pathway of the centrifugal (efferent, antidromic) nerves has been studied histologically in the optic nerves, chiasm, and optic tracts of a patient who had both eyes enucleated 50 years before. Centrifugal fibres in the optic nerve of animals have been known to exist for a long time (Cajal, 1894; Dogiel, 1895), and this fact is supported by recent physiological observations (Granit, 1955; D...

The occurrence of several biologically active neuropeptides (calcitonine gene-related peptide, leu-enkephaline, neuropeptide Y, substance P, and vasoactive intestinal peptide) or nitric oxide-synthesizing enzymes (neuronal nitric oxide synthase), tyrosine hydroxylase, vesicular acetylcholine transporter, and their co-localization with tyrosine hydroxylase were investigated by immunohistochemist...

The neuroimaging technique three-dimensional polarized light imaging (3D-PLI) provides a high-resolution reconstruction of nerve fibres in human post-mortem brains. The orientations of the fibres are derived from birefringence measurements of histological brain sections assuming that the nerve fibres—consisting of an axon and a surrounding myelin sheath—are uniaxial birefringent and that the me...

To demonstrate noradrenaline-immunoreactive nerve fibres in liver tissues, we used an antibody to noradrenaline in the immunostaining of liver tissues from rats, guinea-pigs and humans. The tissue specimens were fixed by perfusion or immersion with cacodylate buffer containing sodium metabisulphate and glutaraldehyde, and cryostat sections were prepared. An indirect peroxidase-labelled antibody...

Although measurements of nerve conduction velocity in man were first made nearly a hundred years ago, the procedure was not used clinically until 1948 when Hodes, Larrabee, and German reported reduced conduction velocity in regenerating motor nerves. Later, Hodes (1949) described slow conduction in surviving nerve fibres after poliomyelitis, and more recently it has been shown that conduction m...

Conduction velocity of autonomic unmyelinated fibres has been measured in the cervical sympathetic trunk of normal rats, and in rats intoxicated by acrylamide or by isoniazid. The mean maximal conduction velocity in nerves from normal rats is 2·0 m/sec. There is no significant reduction in velocity of the unmyelinated fibres in nerves from intoxicated rats, although histological studies of the ...