[External temporal biopsy in a case of infiltrating limbic glioma: study of astrocytic membranous wrapping whorls (author's transl)].

An intracranial hypertension was found at autopsy to be due to a limbic infiltrating glioma. A cortical temporal biopsy had been done 14 months before, whose ultrastructural results are reported. Membranous whorls, made of two dense membranes with a variable separative space are seen around neurones, dendrites, axons, synapses and oligoglial cells; they derived from astrocytes and are joined by 2 types of cell junctions: gap-junctions and puncta adherentia. Relations between reactive and tumoral gliosis are discussed.