Are There One Million Nerve Fibres in the Human Medullary Pyramid?
2001 Volume 77 Issue 6 Pages 221-224
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2001 Volume 77 Issue 6 Pages 221-224
It has been the accepted opinion that there are one million nerve fibres in the human medullary pyramid. This seemed to be confirmed in several old reports. But we cannot agree with this opinion. We made nitrocelluloseembedded sections from three normal male brains, and stained them by our modification of Masson-Goldner method. With this method, myelinated axons appeared in blue, whereas the glial processes were coloured in red. which allowed easy discrimination between the two. After morphometric evaluation of the pyramidal axons under the microscope, it appeared without the slightest doubt, that the number of axons does not exceed one-tenth of one million.
