Ultrastructure of the Gracile Nucleus Projection to the Dorsal Accessory Subdivision of the Cat Inferior Olive

This study examined the termination pattern within the dorsal accessory subdivision of the cat inferior olive of axons arising from the gracile nucleus. The gracile terminals were labeled by anterograde transport of wheat germ agglutinin complexed to horseradish peroxidase and visualized with tetramethyl benzidine. Gracile terminals were found to contain round synaptic vesicles and form asymmetric synaptic contacts. Of particular interest was the finding that gracile axons, like axons from the spinal cord, terminate primarily outside of synaptic glomeruli. Yet most of the gracile terminals did not synapse on isolated dendritic elements. Rather, the majority contacted distal dendrites which directly contacted other dendritic elements, forming simple complexes termed dendritic thickets. Typically the dendritic thickets were composed of two or three dendrites that received input from more than one round vesicle-containing synaptic terminal. Only one terminal per thicket was labeled by injections in the gracile nucleus. This clustering of pre- and postsynaptic elements within the thickets provides opportunities for many of the same interactions allowed by synaptic glomeruli, in particular divergence and convergence of information.