Postnatal development of corticospinal projections from motor cortex to the cervical enlargement in the macaque monkey.

The postnatal development of corticospinal projections was investigated in 11 macaques by means of the anterograde transport of wheat germ agglutin-horseradish peroxidase injected into the primary motor cortex hand area. Although the fibers of the corticospinal tract reached all levels of the spinal cord white matter at birth, their penetration into the gray matter was far from complete. At birth, as in the adult, corticospinal projections were distributed to the same regions of the intermediate zone, although they showed marked increases in density during the first 5 months. The unique feature of the primate corticospinal tract, namely direct cortico-motoneuronal projections to the spinal motor nuclei innervating hand muscles, was not present to a significant extent at birth. The density of these cortico-motoneuronal projections increased rapidly during the first 5 months, followed by a protracted period extending into the second year of life. The densest corticospinal terminations occupied only 40% of the hand motor nuclei in the first thoracic segment at 1 month, 73% at 5 months, and 75.5% at 3 years. A caudo-rostral gradient of termination density within the hand motor nuclei was present throughout development and persisted into the adult. As a consequence, the more caudal the segment within the cervical enlargement, the earlier the adult pattern of projection density was reached. No transitory corticospinal projections were found. The continuous postnatal expansion of cortico-motoneuronal projections to hand motor nuclei in primates is in marked contrast to the retraction of exuberant projections that characterizes the development of other sensory and motor pathways in subprimates.