Ultrastructural characteristics of human adult and infant cerebral cortical neurons.

Biopsy specimens of human cerebral cortex from three adults and two infants were studied by correlating their light microscopic features in semithin sections with their ultrastructural characteristics. There was good tissue preservation, due to a minimum delay between obtaining the specimens and fixation. Pyramidal cells had a prominent apical dendrite, fine heterochromatin clumps in the nucleus and generally small numbers of cytoplasmic organelles, except for numerous free ribosomes in some of the large pyramids of Layers III to VI. Non-pyramidal cells lacked an apical dendrite and were further classified, on size and ultrastructure, into small, medium and large types. Large numbers of asymmetrical and symmetrical synapses were present in the neuropil but very few axosomatic synapses were found in the human cerebral cortex compared with subhuman primates and other mammals. Some symmetrical synapses were characterised by the presence of wide pre- and postsynaptic densities. The same general features of the adult cortex were also encountered in the infant, with certain exceptions. Many of the infant neurons had less densely packed heterochromatin, but greater numbers of free ribosomes, compared with the adult, and lipofuscin was absent. There was a total absence of myelinated fibres from the infant cortex; more large diameter dendrites were present than in the adult and axosomatic synapses were commoner.