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locus ceruleus (locus ferrugineus, substantia ferruginea, locus cinereus)
Function:
- role in physiologic response to stress & panic
Structure:
- the locus ceruleus is a shallow depression, blue in a fresh-cut brain, near the lateral wall of the fourth ventricle & cerebral aqueduct
- it consists of about 20,000 melanin-pigmented neuronal cell bodies with norepinephrine-containing axons
Afferents:
- medial prefrontal cortex
- nucleus paragigantocellularis, which integrates autonomic & environmental stimuli
- nucleus prepositus hypoglossi, involved in gaze
- lateral hypothalamus, which releases orexin, excitatory in the locus coeruleus
Efferents:
- projects widely to the spinal cord, amygdala, hypothalamus, striatum, cerebral cortex & cerebellum
Pathology:
- the locus ceruleus may be earliest affected region in Alzheimer's disease
a) abnormal tau aggregates (pretangles) develop within proximal axons of noradrenergic locus coeruleus projection neurons in the absence of tau lesions (pretangles, NFTs) in the entorhinal cortex or beta-amyloid pathology in the neocortex
b) AD may begin in the locus ceruleus & progress to the entorhinal cortex via trans-synaptic transport of tau protein aggregates & neuron-to-neuron transmission
c) a prion-like mechanism is suggested [3]
General
CNS nucleus
References
- Stedman's Medical Dictionary 26th ed, Williams &
Wilkins, Baltimore, 1995
- Lang AE & Lazano AM
Parkinson's disease. First of two parts.
NEJM 339:1044-53, 1998
PMID: 9761807
- Braak H, Rub U, Schultz C, Del Tredici K.
Vulnerability of cortical neurons to Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's diseases.
J Alzheimers Dis. 2006;9(3 Suppl):35-44. Review.
PMID: 16914843
- Wikipedia: Locus ceruleus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_coeruleus
Component-of
mesencephalon (midbrain)
pons