Location of the rostral end of the longitudinal brain axis: Review of an old topic in the light of marking experiments on the closing rostral neuropore

Abstract

The rostral end of the forebrain was classically defined on the basis of descriptive data. Different assumptions on the mode of closure of the rostral neuropore caused three different theories of the rostral end of the forebrain to be formulated (His 1893a; von Kupffer, '06; Johnston, '09). Some recent descriptive and experimental data have put these theories into question. A piece of black nylon thread was inserted through the rostral neuropore of chick embryos and was fixed to its ventral lip. These operations were done at all intermediate stages during the process of closure of the rostral neuropore. The embryos were sacrificed at a later stage, by which time the neuropore had disappeared. In the cleared specimens the threads always lay at the same site, namely the upper border of lamina terminalis, irrespective of the stage at which the marker was inserted. These results stand against His's conception ((1893a, b) of a sutura terminalis and support the single mechanism of sutura dorsalis during closure of the rostral neuropore. The marking data therefore imply that the topologic rostral end of the forebrain lies at the upper limit of lamina terminalis, as proposed by von Kupffer, '06).