Morphologic hippocampal asymmetry in male and female rats

Abstract Our findings indicate that the hippocampus of the rat varies in structure in the right and left hemispheres and in males and females. A morphologic study of the thickness of the dorsal hippocampus was carried out on celloidin-embedded histologic sections from male, Long-Evans rats of the following ages: 6, 10, 14, 26, 41, 55, 77, 90, 108, 185, 300, 400, and 650 days. Between 15 and 25 rats per age group were used, a total of 225 male rats. In addition, the hippocampi were measured on 47 Long-Evans female, 90-day-old rats: 11 normal and 36 animals ovariectomized one day after birth. We found that in males the right hippocampus was significantly thicker than the left for some but not all age groups. In the female at 90 days of age, the left hippocampus was thicker than the right. This left-right pattern in the female hippocampus did not reverse, as it did in the cerebral cortex after ovariectomy at birth.

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