However, there was no clear relationship between the size and

extent of the CTb injection and the number of retrogradely labelled cells in either C7 or L4. Although Lima (1990) identified the DRt as a major target for axons of lamina I neurons, Raboisson et al. (1996) reported that the main spinal inputs to this nucleus came from the deep dorsal horn. Small tracer injections that were largely restricted to the NTS have been shown to label significant numbers of lamina I cells (Menétrey and de Pommery, 1991) and ascending projections from superficial dorsal horn to NTS have been identified (Slugg and Light, 1994 and Raboisson et al., 1996). Interestingly, AZD6244 datasheet in one experiment in which CTb was injected more laterally, resulting in extensive filling of DRt but with little labelling in the medial part of the NTS, we found very few lamina I cells labelled at either lumbar or cervical levels (A.J. Todd and E. Polgár, unpublished observations). It is therefore likely that the NTS, rather than the DRt, is the main dorsal medullary target for lamina I neurons, and the findings of Lima (1990) may be explained by spread of tracer into the NTS in her study. Previous studies have provided evidence that most lamina I neurons in the lumbar enlargement that are retrogradely labelled from thalamus, selleck PAG or CVLM can also be labelled from LPb. Spike et al. (2003) reported that following injection of tracers into PAG and LPb, 97% of lamina I spino-PAG

cells in L4 were double-labelled, and Al-Khater and Todd (2009) found that 97% of lamina I spinothalamic cells in L3–5 segments were labelled from LPb. Spike et al. (2003) also observed that when injections were made into both LPb and CVLM, 85% of labelled cells contained Fluorogold transported

from Carnitine palmitoyltransferase II the LPb. More recently we have used the same injection strategy and found that a higher proportion (∼ 95%) were labelled from LPb (Al Ghamdi et al., in press). This difference was attributed to the increased sensitivity for detection of Cy5 (to reveal Fluorogold) of a gallium arsenide phosphide photomultiplier tube that was used in the latter study. The results of the present experiments extend these findings, by demonstrating that virtually all of the lamina I neurons labelled from the dorsal medulla are also included in the population labelled from LPb. Al-Khater and Todd (2009) reported that 99% of spinothalamic lamina I neurons in C7 and C8 segments were retrogradely labelled from the LPb. The present results show that, as in the lumbar enlargement, most lamina I projection neurons in C7 can also be labelled by injection of tracer into the LPb, since in all but one of the experiments, 97–100% of the cells labelled from PAG, CVLM or dorsal medulla were double-labelled. In one experiment (#2), the proportion was lower (85%), but in this case the most medial part of LPb was not included in the CTb injection site and it is likely that this resulted in a reduced number of labelled cells.