Mouse Extraocular Muscles and the Musculotopic Organization of their Innervation.

The organization of extraocular muscles and their motor nuclei was investigated in the mouse due to the increased importance of this model for oculomotor research. Mice showed a standard extraocular muscle organization pattern, although their eyes are set at the side of the head. They do have more prominent oblique muscles, whose insertion points differ from those of frontal-eyed species. Retrograde tracers revealed that the motoneuron layout aligns with the general vertebrate plan with respect to nuclei and laterality. The mouse departed in some significant respects from previously studied species. First, more overlap between the distributions of muscle-specific motoneuronal pools was present in the oculomotor nucleus. Furthermore, motoneuron dendrites for each pool filled the entire oculomotor nucleus and extended beyond the edge of the abducens nucleus. This suggests mouse extraocular motoneuron afferents must target specific pools based on features other than dendritic distribution and nuclear borders. Second, abducens internuclear neurons are located outside the abducens nucleus. We concluded this because no unlabeled abducens internuclear neurons were observed following lateral rectus muscle injections and because retrograde tracer injections into the oculomotor nucleus labeled cells immediately ventral and ventrolateral to the abducens nucleus, not within it. This may provide an anatomical substrate for differential input to motoneurons and internuclear neurons that allows rodents to move their eyes more independently. Finally, while soma size measurements suggested motoneuron subpopulations supplying multiply- and singly-innervated muscle fibers are present, markers for neurofilaments and perineuronal nets indicated overlap in the size distributions of the two populations. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.