[Contribution of serial electron microscopy to study of ultrastructure of cerebral cortex]

Stereology was established in 1961, in a range of morphometry, as a science applying mathematical methods for three-dimensional interpretation of two-dimensional data. Serial electron microscopy is one of stereological methods. It enables to analyse series of ultrathin sections and to obtain three-dimensional reconstructions of ultrastructural objects. An extremely complicated architectonics of central nervous tissue, namely the cerebral cortex, does not enable to substitute this difficult method by scanning electron microscopy, which is so suitable for surface analysis of many other non-neural tissue elements. From the times about 45 years ago, when in Sjöstrand's laboratory first ultrastructural three-dimensional reconstructions appeared, this method, now highly computerized, is more and more frequently used and without any doubt it will soon appear as a standard part of any image analyzing software. The author demonstrates on his own three-dimensional reconstructions some results which offer new insights into the ultrastructure of cerebral cortex.