Abstract:
This study investigated the nuclear organization of four immunohistochemically identifiable neural
systems (cholinergic, catecholaminergic, serotonergic and orexinergic) within the brain of the African
pygmy mouse (Mus minutoides). The African pygmy mice studied had a brain mass of around 275 mg,
making these the smallest rodent brains to date in which these neural systems have been investigated. In
contrast to the assumption that in this small brain there would be fewer subdivisions of these neural
systems, we found that all nuclei generally observed for these systems in other rodent brains were also
present in the brain of the African pygmy mouse. As with other rodents previously studied in the
subfamily Murinae, we observed the presence of cortical cholinergic neurons and a compactly organized
locus coeruleus. These two features of these systems have not been observed in the non-Murinae rodents
studied to date. Thus, the African pygmy mouse displays what might be considered a typical Murinae
brain organization, and despite its small size, the brain does not appear to be any less complexly
organized than other rodent brains, even those that are over 100 times larger such as the Cape porcupine
brain. The results are consistent with the notion that changes in brain size do not affect the evolution of
nuclear organization of complex neural systems. Thus, species belonging to the same order generally
have the same number and complement of the subdivisions, or nuclei, of specific neural systems despite
differences in brain size, phenotype or time since evolutionary divergence.
