EFFECT OF OVER-ACTIVITY ON SYNAPSE 257 



In all 122 series of normal and fatigued brains form the basis of 

 the present article. 



ON THE INTERNAL MORPHOLOGY OF THE MAUTHNER CELL AND ON 

 THE MINUTE STRUCTURE OF THE SYNAPSE 



Under this heading I will make a few notes on the internal mor- 

 phology of the Mauthner cell (figs. 1 and 2) and on the structure 

 of the synapse, which are necessary as the foundation of the fol- 

 lowing statement and were not yet described in my recent pub- 

 lication. Nissl bodies are distributed evenly through the cell 

 body and bases of the dendrites, leaving free only the axone hil- 

 lock. They are relatively small as compared with those in the 

 motor cells and very numerous, as Bartelmez (3) stated. The 

 Nissl substance is found in the shape of variably long striae and 

 is arranged generally parallel to the contour of the cell body and 

 in part also to the surface of the nucleus. The remaining stain- 

 able substance is irregularly scattered and is more or less short; 

 some of it is spheroidal. The spindles were found especially on 

 the surface of the cell and in the larger dendrites. The so-called 

 nuclear caps did not come to my observation. The axone hillock 

 is entirely free from stainable substance and marked off by a tol- 

 erably sharp-curved plane from the granular protoplasm of the 

 cell body and shows at its margin a layer of especially fine gran- 

 ules. The nucleus of the Mauthner cell differs in no essential 

 from the typical nuclear structure of the nerve cell. 



As was precisely stated in my recent communication, the 

 synapse of the Mauthner cell is penetrated by the Golgi network, 

 which is formed by the arborization and the reunion of the deli- 

 cate processes of the neuroglia cells in and about the 'axone cap.' 

 It was also accepted that the Gol^i network is to be attributed 

 to that category of the neuroglia tissue, which Held (24) termed 

 as the reticular gUa tissue formed by the somewhat modified plas- 

 ma of the glia cell. Furthermore, I paid special attention in that 

 paper to the histological structure of the nervous elements of that 

 synapse and the relation of the latter to the Golgi net. We may 

 therefore pass directly to the description of the finer structure 

 of the glia cells themselves and the condition of the capillaries in 

 this synapse. 



