Journal of Neuroscience, Vol 1, 1331-1346, Copyright © 1981 by Society for Neuroscience
Density, soma size, and regional distribution of rabbit retinal ganglion cells
CW Oyster, ES Takahashi and DC Hurst
Cell soma area or diameter distributions are generally very skewed and
present some unusual problems in characterization and description. In this
study of ganglion cell soma size in rabbit retina, our conclusions are
based on a statistical method which not only characterizes this particular
neuronal population but which also may be of considerable value in other
species and other parts of the nervous system. To facilitate comparisons
between retinas, we used ganglion cell density as the measure of retinal
location. The rabbit retina has a horizontally extended area centralis, the
visual streak, which we show to have a uniformly high peak cell density
along most of its length. Cell density maps were used to estimate the total
number of ganglion cells in the retina; the mean for three retinas was
about 406,000 cells, which corresponds well to an earlier count of optic
nerve axons (394,000 +/- 20,000; Vaney, D.I., and A. Hughes (1976) J. Comp.
Neurol. 170: 241-252). Contrary to other reports, we could not find any
large differences in ganglion cell size distributions between the inferior
peripheral retina and the visual streak nor could we confirm the report of
a large cell area temporalis (Provis, J. M. (1979) J. Comp. Neurol. 185:
121-138). Cell size distributions in the superior and inferior retina were
very different, however, and, within the inferior retina, there was a small
but systematic change in cell size between the periphery and the visual
streak. In general, small and medium size cells were present in nearly
constant proportions throughout the inferior retina, while the large
ganglion cells showed a small decrease in proportion from the periphery to
the visual streak; the decline in large cells was a linear function of cell
density. In terms of ganglion cell soma size, there was no sharp
distinction between the visual streak and the peripheral retina.