Comparative Cytoarchitectonic Atlas of the C57BL/6 and 129/Sv Mouse Brains

"The mouse is rapidly becoming the most commonly used mammalian resource in biomedicine... Because many transgenic mice (gene knock-out and knock-in) models are used in neuroscience, it is important to document the differences in brain organization existing among different mouse strains. This atlas represents a first step in this direction comparing the anatomic organization of the brains of the C57BL/6 and the 129/Sv mice, two substrains that are frequently used in studies of the central nervous system... For each animal, a representative [coronal] series of 49 levels for general cytoarchitecture and 6 levels for myeloarchitecture are presented in standard stereotaxic coordinates... The left side of the brain [which is displayed on the right side of the plates] contains a superimposed outline of the relevant anatomical structures. Facing each plate, a schematic outline of the left hemisphere of the brain is provided... Small parasagittal diagrams show the rostrocaudal location of the plates... Matching CD-ROMS, containing all of the plates in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 format, TIFF images of the scanned sections, structure lists and comparative index, are provided." (from the Introduction, pp. 1-2) The nomenclature is that of the rat brain as defined in Swanson-1998. Elsevier