Does microwaving enhance the Golgi methods? A quantitative analysis of disparate staining patterns in the cerebral cortex.

As a family of techniques, the Golgi methods have long been used for studying the morphology and structure of the central nervous system. Due to their capricious nature, many modifications have been employed to improve the reliability and quality of the technique, including the recent addition of microwave energy. In the present study, we evaluated the effectiveness of adding microwave energy to two Golgi methods: the Golgi-Cox method and the rapid Golgi method. These methods were selected for their widespread use in animal research and human postmortem studies. Control tissue was compared to tissue exposed to microwave energy for varying lengths of time during the chromating step of both methods. As assessed by stereological cell counts and qualitative observation, the addition of microwave energy improved the quality of the impregnations and the number of labeled profiles in both methods up to a specific limit of exposure. Surprisingly, increases in the number of profiles were often the result of increased non-neuronal staining at the expense of neuronal staining. This result appears to be due to the fact that different classes of labeled profiles displayed distinct staining time courses.