User:FortissimusVeritatis/Nucleus paragigantocellularis

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This is my personal area to draft an article on the nucleus paragigantocellularis. If you'd like to contribute, which I welcome, please leave me a message on the discussion page.

Draft
The nucleus paragigantocellularis (PGi), located in the rostral ventral medulla is a key brainstem region involved in the expression of cardiovascular and respiratory changes that occur following sympathetic activation. The PGi is one of two major afferents of the locus coeruleus (LC), and sends collateral projections to the LC and to the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). Neurons in this region have also been associated with analgesia processes. Consistent with this, PGi neurons have widespread distributions to brain areas that are important for controlling autonomic activity and nociception.

Using retrograde transport of Fluoro-Gold (FG) combined with immunofluorescenee for phenylethanolamine-N-methyltrunsferase (PNMT), we have examined afferents to the nucleus locus coeruleus (LC) from the rostral ventrolateral medulla (nucleus paragigantoeellularis; PGi) in rats sustaining lesions of the medullary adrenergic bundle (MB). In lesioned rats, very few adrenergic LC-projecting neurons persist in the PGi ipsilateral to the lesion, representing a 90% decrease in comparison to non-lesioned animals. These results indicate that almost all adrenergic input to the LC from C1 neurons in PGi is conveyed by the MB. In contrast, the number of non-adrenergic LC afferent neurons in the PGi ipsilateral to the lesion only decreased by 48% after such lesions. Thus, this pathway also provides non-adrenergic projections to LC from PGi, but many of these are conveyed by other route(s) as well.