Documenting brain diversity in field-caught lizards, from skull to cell: initial development of a processing pipeline for top down, multi-scale structural analyses of a single brain by integrating specialized microcomputed tomography (diceCT), Nissl-based cytoarchitectonics, and immunohistochemistry (abstract 778.02)

摘要: At the gross anatomical scale, computed tomography (CT) is a great tool for examining dense vertebrate tissues. However, traditional CT does not permit the visualization of non-mineralized soft tissues, such as the brain. The use of contrast agents for CT has helped to develop a means for differentiating a diversity of soft tissue types.At the level of the neuron, studies that employ both cyto-and chemoarchitectonic approaches to staining are ideal to capture the full extent of phenotypic diversity displayed by cells within the brain. Multi-scale studies are necessary to elucidate the diversity of nervous tissues, and their spatial relationships to other tissue types.