Johns Hopkins University, Department of Neuroscience

                                     Lawrence Schramm

 


Slices of spinal cord can be grown in cultures and maintain normal structure and connections.  The figure illustrates a portion of one such culture of the thoracic spinal cord.  We use this portion of the spinal cord because it contains two kinds of motor neurons which receive very different connections, the alpha motor neurons that innervate skeletal muscle (left) and the sympathetic preganglionic neurons that innervate blood vessels, smooth muscle, and glands (right).

 

 

 

 
© 2005 Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine