On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Candace Andersson wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of a staining procedure which
> differentially stains neurons and glial cells in cerebral cortex.  I have
> 20 um frozen, cryostat sections of rat prefrontal cortex that have been
> perfused with 2% paraformaldehyde.

   If you can recognize glial cells adequately by their nuclei,
   an ordinary Nissl stain should be OK in the cerebral cortex.
   It wouldn't do in an area like the dentate gyrus or cerebellar
   cortex, where there are lots of little interneurons with
   dark nuclei (not easy to distinguish from oligodendrocytes).

 John A. Kiernan,
 Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
 The University of Western Ontario,
 LONDON,  Canada  N6A 5C1