Golgi-Cox

The Golgi-Cox technique allows visualization of individual neurons together with most of their dendritic and axonal arborizations, permits the morphological classification of different cell types, and the characterization of their mutual relationship. The idea behind this classification is that differences in dendritic and axonal morphology are likely to be associated with differences in input and output characteristics, respectively. However, Golgi-Cox impregnation alone provides no information about the neurotrasmitters or other chemical characteristics of the neurons. Nevertheless, a combination of Golgi impregnation with immunocytochemistry can provide neurochemical specifity for the Golgi studies, and, in turn, allows the visualization of processes of immunocytochemically identified neurons or their pre/post-synaptic targets.