Fig. 1. Neurotrophins affect LGN neuron size. White bars represent contralateral
and black bars ipsilateral values. Size frequency histograms reveal that (A)
cortical cytochrome C control and (B) BDNF infusions were not effective. In
contrast, (C) cortical NT-4/5 and (D) NGF infusions consistently induced
shifts to larger sizes. In the absence of a retrograde tracer all neuronal
somata had to be sampled including small-sized cells, which presumably
correspond to non-reactive interneurons (representing 20% of LGN neurons)
(Sefton and Dreher, 1995).
However, the significance levels remained the same when running the tests on
only the largest 80% of the neurons. The small insets indicate the median
shifts [(ipsilateral median size contralateral median
size)/contralateral median size] in the individual animals analyzed. Positive
shifts indicate larger ipsilateral neurons, negative shifts indicates smaller
ipsilateral neurons; shifts of up to ±5% were due to biological
variation.