Ultrastructure of rabbit retinal nerve fibre layer--neuro-glial relationships, myelination, and nerve fibre spectrum.

The ultrastructure of the rabbit retinal nerve fibre layer was studied both in retinal centre and periphery. The central nerve fibre layer was found to contain large masses of--mostly myelinated--nerve fibres, somata and processes of astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, vitreal processes of Müller cells, and blood vessels. Astrocyte and Müller cell processes could be discriminated both by their direction and by the thickness of their intermediate filaments which was about 7 nm in Müller cells and about 10 nm in astrocytes. Some peculiarities of nuclei and cytoplasmic organelles of rabbit retinal astrocytes and oligodendrocytes are described. Myelin sheaths are demonstrated to be derived from oligodendrocytes; in some cases, two axons were found within a common myelin sheath. In the retinal periphery, only sparse thin bundles of unmyelinated axons were found in between a thick row of big Müller cell endfeet; astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and blood vessels were missing here. In both retinal regions, node-like membrane specializations of optic axons were found; these were always surrounded by a corona of fine glial processes arising from astrocytes as well as from Müller cells. The features of myelination within the rabbit nerve fibre layer were quantified, and compared with recent literature data. A hypothesis is offered relating the production of myelin to the release of diffusable substance(s) by active axons. This hypotheses allows to account for the striking finding that relatively thick axons remain unmyelinated in the nerve fibre layer of most mammalian retinae like in the rabbit retinal periphery whereas they become myelinated in the central rabbit retina like in central nervous system in general.