Brainstem projections to motoneurons in the lumbar spinal cord : an ultrastructural study in rat

This thesis deals with an ultrastructural study in rat on the descending projections from the ventro-lateral medullary medial reticular formation, the medullary raphe nuclei and the area of the nucleus coeruleus and subcoeruleus to the motoneuronal cell groups in the lumbar spinal cord. Since these projections te~inate not only in the intermediate zone, bu~ also directly on motoneurons, they constitute a special subgroup of the descending pathways to the spinal cord (reviewed briefly in Ch I.5).