Morphological investigation of the deep pineal of the rat.

The results presented here reveal that in adult Sprague-Dawley and Wistar rats the pineal gland represents a complex rather than a single organ. Regularly one can distinguish (i) pineal tissue in the intercommissural region as a deep pineal, (ii) a superficial pineal, which represents the major part of the pineal complex, and (iii) nearly always a parenchymal stalk of variable length. The volume of the deep pineal with the adjacent parenchymal stalk exhibits great interindividual variation. It amounts to 127 +/- 39 X 10(5) mum3 (mean +/- standard deviation). The histological appearance of the deep and superficial pineal tissue is fairly similar. The intrinsic cells of the deep and superficial pineal differ in nuances only. Karyometry reveals that the nuclear volumes of the intrinsic cells of the deep pineal are very variable ranging from 90--450 mum3, with a mean value of 207 mum3. The changes over a period of 24 h reach statistical significance.