Calretinin immunoreactivity in the monkey hippocampal formation--II. Intrinsic GABAergic and hypothalamic...

Our light and electron microscopic studies (Seress L., Nitsch R. and Leranth C. (1993) Neuroscience 55, 775-796.) indicated that in the hippocampus of the African Green monkey, calretinin is exclusively present in non-pyramidal cells. Calretinin-positive axons formed a prominent band at the border of the dentate molecular and granule cell layers and in the pyramidal layer of CA2, and established asymmetric synapses with different postsynaptic targets. The goal of this study is to determine the cells of origin of this presumably extrinsic innervation, and subsequently, the characterization of their neurochemical features. We were able to demonstrate that calretinin-immunoreactive axon terminals in the inner molecular layer of the dentate gyrus and in the pyramidal layer of CA2 disappear 10 days after fimbria-fornix transection. Retrograde tracing revealed their cells of origin to be in the supramammillary nucleus. Co-localization studies employing the cryostat consecutive, semithin section technique provided evidence that these large projecting neurons contained both calretinin and substance-P but lack GABA as an inhibitory transmitter. In contrast, co-localization studies revealed that almost all of the intrinsic calretinin-positive neurons in different areas of the primate hippocampus contained GAD or GABA. These results suggest that there are two separate calretinin-containing systems in the primate hippocampus, i.e. an intrinsic inhibitory and an extrinsic excitatory one, the latter deriving from the supramammillary nucleus of the hypothalamus.