Functional degeneration of isolated central stumps of crayfish sensory axons.

In the crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, nerve 5 carries primarily sensory axons from the tail fan to the 6th abdominal ganglion where they synaptically activate interneuron A. Since the sensory neurons have their somata located at the periphery, transection of nerve 5 part way to the ganglion allowed us to examine the fate of their soma-less central stumps. Up to 3 weeks postlesion the response to stimulation of nerve 5 consisted of a brief latency spike in interneuron A, similar to that in control animals and to stimulation of the intact nerve 4. Stimulation of the lesioned nerve 5 beyond 3 weeks failed to fire interneuron A. This loss of function was correlated to loss of axons in nerve 5 deduced by comparing the numbers in the lesioned nerve 5 to its contralateral intact counterpart. The numbers are about equal in the paired nerves but rapidly decline on the lesioned side to 50% within 1 week, 20% within 3 weeks, and less than 10% in subsequent weeks. This loss affects all size classes of axons. However, in the 3 week lesioned nerve large glial infoldings subdivided some of the larger axons and single nuclei were seen in a few of the medium-sized axons. Possibly subdivision of large axons by glial infolding may introduce glial nuclei into axons.