Quantitative analysis of the dendritic branching pattern of small pyramidal cells from adult rat somesthetic and visual cortex.

Abstract The three-dimensional structure of Golgi-impregnated neurons was studied using modern data collecting techniques. Branch length and branch angle distributions of the bifurcating dendritic structure were examined and found to have a wide continuous range of observed values. These types of distributions imply a stochastic design for the bifurcating structure. No apparent pattern was found in the branching configuration. However more work is needed to examine all possible correlations between the observed classes of measured values. Basal dendrites seem to follow the same stochastic branching pattern where branch segment distributions even have the same parameters. However, some basal dendrites have more nodes and hence greater total length. In fact, the total length of each dendrite was the only parameter useful in distinguishing between neurons of the visual and somesthetic areas.