Central autonomic innervation of the lower urinary tract - a neuroanatomy study

Knowledge about the central innervation of the lower urinary tract is limit ed. The spinal cord and the pontine micturition center have been investigat ed most thoroughly, whereas higher centers have received little attention. Pseudorabies virus (PRV), a self-amplifying and transneuronal tracer was in jected into the bladder trigone of 21 Sprague-Dawley rats. The animals were killed after 72, 96, and 120 h. The whole CNS was sectioned and immunostai ned for PRV. CNS centers directly connected to the bladder include the inte rmedio lateral cell column, the central autonomic nucleus, and the nucleus intercalatus at the spinal cord levels T12-L2 and L6-S2. The raphe pallidus et magnus, the A5 noradrenergic area, the pontine micturition center, the locus coeruleus, the periaquaductal gray, the nucleus para- et periventricu laris of the hypothalamus, the red nucleus, the medial preoptic area, and t he cortex are supraspinal centers connected to the bladder. Lower urinary t ract function is a complex multilevel and multineuronal interaction. It inv olves facilitation and inhibition at many levels of the CNS.