Location of the motoneurons supplying the rabbit pharyngeal constrictor muscles and the peripheral course of their axons: a study using the retrograde HRP or fluorescent labeling technique.

The location of the motoneurons supplying the rabbit pharyngeal constrictor muscles (the superior and the middle constrictors, and the thyropharyngeus and the cricopharyngeus; the last two collectively compose the inferior constrictor) was investigated with intramuscular injection of HRP or the fluorescent tracer nuclear yellow into the individual muscles. Moreover, the peripheral course of their axons was investigated by injection of HRP into all of the pharyngeal constrictors in conjunction with intracranial severing of either the vagus or the glossopharyngeal nerves. The pharyngeal constrictor motoneurons were ipsilaterally located within a subdivision of the nucleus ambiguus which is formed by a compact arrangement of the smallest neurons of the nucleus and situated in the rostral half of the nucleus. We named that subdivision the compact cell group (CoG). Axons of the pharyngeal constrictor motoneurons traversed the vagal rootlets. The rostrocaudal extent of the pharyngeal constrictor motoneurons covered almost the entire length of CoG at a level from about 500 to 2,900 microns rostral to the obex, with their number being most numerous in the middle one-third level of the CoG. Although the motoneurons of the superior constrictor, those of the middle constrictor, and those of the thyropharyngeous and the cricopharyngeus overlapped considerably in location, they tended to be arranged rostrocaudally in that order. At the middle one-third level of the CoG, where the CoG is subdivided into dorsomedial and ventrolateral subgroups of neurons, the superior and the middle constrictor motoneurons were confined to the medial portion of the dorsomedial subgroup, while the inferior constrictor motoneurons were distributed throughout its entirety.