AUTHOR=Piavchenko Gennadii , Soldatov Vladislav , Venediktov Artem , Kartashkina Natalia , Novikova Natalia , Gorbunova Marina , Boronikhina Tatiana , Yatskovskiy Alexander , Meglinski Igor , Kuznetsov Sergey 

TITLE=A combined use of silver pretreatment and impregnation with consequent Nissl staining for cortex and striatum architectonics study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroanatomy

VOLUME=Volume 16 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroanatomy/articles/10.3389/fnana.2022.940993

DOI=10.3389/fnana.2022.940993

ISSN=1662-5129

ABSTRACT=Despite of extremely fast growing of modern techniques for visualization in life sciences, the classical methods of histological examination have yet to be outdated. Herein, we introduce a new approach to combine silver nitrate pretreatment and impregnation with consequent Nissl (cresyl violet) staining for cortex and striatum architectonics study on the same microscopy slide. The developed approach of hybrid staining provides a high-quality visualization of cellular and subcellular structures, including impregnated neurons (about 10%), Nissl stained neurons (all the remaining ones) and astrocytes as well as chromatophilic substance, nucleoli and neuropil in paraffin sections. We provide a comparative study of the neuronal architectonics in both motor cortex and striatum differing by their tinctorial properties. In addition to comparative study of the neuronal architectonics in both motor cortex and striatum, the traditional methods to stain the cortex (motor and piriform) and the striatum are considered. The proposed staining approach compiles the routine conventional methods for thin sections, expanding avenues for more advanced examination of neurons, blood-brain barrier components and fibers both at normal or pathological conditions. One of the main hallmarks of our method is an ability to detect changed glial cells number. The results of astrocytes visualization in motor cortex obtained by the developed technique agree well with the alternative studies by glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunohistochemical reaction. The presented approach of combined staining has a great potential in current histological practice, in particular for express evaluation of several neurological disorders either in clinical, pre-clinical or neurobiological animal studies.