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Updated: Oct 1, 2026

Facial Nerve Axotomy in Mice: A Model to Study Motoneuron Response to Injury
Published on: February 23, 2015
The relationship of intramuscular nerve branching and synaptogenesis to motoneuron survival
1Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs 06269.
Abstract:
The target has been considered for some time to play a major role in allowing neurons to survive the period of naturally occurring cell death. For the motoneurons that innervate the chick limb, evidence is presented that suggests access to target-derived trophic factor via intramuscular nerve branches and synapses may be important in regulating neuronal survival. Alterations in branching and synapse formation produced by activity blockade as well as by alteration of adhesion molecule function are shown to result in changes in motoneuron survival consistent with the proposed hypothesis. The relevance of these observations to the numerical-matching hypothesis of vertebrate neuronal cell death is also considered.
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