Cell migrations to the isocortex in the rat

Abstract

Cells that took up tritiated thymidine (H‐3T) at various periods of intrauterine and early infant life in the periventricular proliferative zone and migrated to form the isocortex in the rat were tracked autoradiographically in series of stages to characterize their movements. Cells labeled at any stage soon separated themselves into cohorts, some continuing to proliferate, others migrating at once, and still others delaying before migrating. Migratory cells moved to the developing cortex along the curved and oblique paths of the pallial fibers, whose basic plan was established by the early thalamocortical fibers. Magnitude of speed was 15 to 30 μ per hour. The primitive neural cells that originated on each of the fourteenth to eighteenth intrauterine days first reached the cortex in about 48 hours, others took two or three days longer. Migrations originating on the nineteenth to twenty‐first days continued into the week after birth; as the primitive cells approached the cortex, however, they differentiated into young neurons, and traveled perpendicularly to its outer part. The first cohort of twentieth day labeled cells reached their intracortical destinations in about three days, the last in about ten days. The isocortex was formed essentially from within outward. The first neuroglia destined for the isocortex arose on the twenty‐first intrauterine day.