Tuberculoventral neurons project to the multipolar cell area but not to the octopus cell area of the posteroventral cochlear nucleus.

Tuberculoventral neurons in the deep layer of the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) provide frequency-specific inhibition to neurons in the anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) of the mouse (Wickesberg and Oertel, '88, '90). The present experiments examine the projection from the deep DCN to the posteroventral cochlear nucleus (PVCN). Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) injections into the PVCN reveal that the multipolar cell area, but not the octopus cell area, is innervated by neurons in the deep layer of the DCN. Injections into the multipolar cell area, in the rostral and ventral PVCN, labeled neurons across the entire rostrocaudal extent of the deep DCN. The labeled tuberculoventral neurons generally lay within the band of labeled auditory nerve terminals in the DCN. Injections of HRP into the octopus cell area, in the dorsal caudal PVCN, labeled almost no cells within the band of auditory nerve fiber terminals that were labeled by the same injection. The inhibition from tuberculoventral neurons onto ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) neurons is likely to be mediated by glycine (Wickesberg and Oertel, '90). Slices of the cochlear nuclear complex were immunolabeled by an antibody against glycine conjugated with glutaraldehyde to bovine serum albumin (Wenthold et al., '87). Glycine-like immunoreactivity was found throughout the DCN, the AVCN and the multipolar cell area, but there was little labeling in the octopus cell area. This finding provides independent evidence that tuberculoventral neurons do not innervate the octopus cell area and indicates that the octopus cell area is anatomically and functionally distinct.