Striatal afferents in the newt Triturus cristatus

In order to investigate the neuronal populations projecting to the corpus striatum in the brain of a urodele, Triturus cristatus, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) retrograde labeling was used in parallel with anterograde degeneration, glyoxylic acid histofluorescence and behavioral testing. Striatal injections of HRP revealed that the main striatal afferent systems originate within the diencephalon, specifically in the dorsal thalamus and paraventricular organ of the hypothalamus. Several small groups of neurons in other diencephalic areas also participate in striatal innervation: proeminentia ventralis, amygdala, contralateral corpus striatum, preoptic area, posterior tuberal nucleus, locus coeruleus and raphe nuclei. Degeneration experiments after mechanical lesion of the paraventricular organ established the existence of a hypothalamostriatal projection. Degenerating axonal profiles were also found in many of the structures already identified as projecting to the striatum, suggesting that the paraventricular organ might influence the striatum not only directly but also indirectly through these other afferent systems. In the paraventricular organ, glyoxylic acid fluorescence histochemistry showed numerous monoamine neurons that corresponded in distribution and morphology to the retrogradely HRP-labeled neurons. Paraventricular-organ-lesioned males displayed a severe impairment of courtship behavior in the form of decreased tail beating and head stepping by the females. This suggests that the regulation of stereotyped hypermotricity might involve the monoamine component of the hypothalamo-striatal projection.