Synaptology of the direct projections from the nucleus of the solitary tract to pharyngeal motoneurons in the nucleus ambiguus of the rat

During the pharyngeal phase of the swallowing reflex, the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) receives peripheral inputs from the pharynx by means of the glossopharyngeal ganglion and is the location of premotor neurons for the pharyngeal (PH) motoneurons. The semicompact formation of the nucleus ambiguus (AmS) is composed of small and medium-sized neurons that do not project to the pharynx, and large PH motoneurons. We investigated whether the neurons in the NTS projected directly to the PH motoneurons or to the other kinds of neurons in the AmS by using the electron microscope. When wheat germ agglutinin-conjugated horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) was injected into the NTS after cholera toxin subunit B-conjugated HRP (CT-HRP) injections into the pharyngeal muscles of male Sprague-Dawley rats, many nerve terminals anterogradely labeled with WGA-HRP were found to contact PH motoneurons retrogradely labeled with CT-HRP. Most of the labeled axodendritic terminals (63%) contained pleomorphic vesicles with symmetric synaptic contacts (Gray's type II), and the remaining ones contained round vesicles with asymmetric synaptic contacts (Gray's type I). About 14% of the axosomatic terminals on PH motoneuron in a sectional plane were anterogradely labeled, and about 70% of the labeled axosomatic terminals were Gray's type II. Observations of serial ultrathin sections revealed that both the small and the medium-sized neurons received only a few labeled axosomatic terminals that were exclusively Gray's type I. These results indicate that the NTS neurons may send mainly inhibitory as well as a few excitatory inputs directly to the PH motoneurons in the AmS. J. Comp. Neurol. 393:391–401, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.