This article is part of the supplement: 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida .

Oral presentation

Comparison of key interhemispheric connections and the posterior commissure in normal and hydrocephalic rat fetuses

Swapna Vaddi, Sajida Rasul, Sarah Cains, Andrew Shepherd and Carys Bannister

Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Manchester, Stopford Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK

corresponding author email

from 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida
Providence, RI, USA. 11–14 June 2008

Cerebrospinal Fluid Research 2009, 6(Suppl 1):S8doi:10.1186/1743-8454-6-S1-S8

Published:	3 February 2009

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

There are a surprising number of interconnecting fibre tracts linking the two cerebral hemispheres, the largest of these being the corpus callosum, but the hippocampal and anterior commissures are also sizable structures. The posterior commissure bridges the upper part of the midbrain and lies adjacent to the posterior end of the third ventricle. Hydrocephalus is known to cause thinning of the corpus callosum but its effect on the other interconnections has not been extensively investigated. On day E18 at the onset of hydrocephalus in the HTx rat development of the corpus callosum is incomplete. The observed thinning of the corpus callosum in fetal onset hydrocephalus is likely to deprive the hemispheres of interconnections. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of hydrocephalus on the other interconnecting fibre tracts and in particular whether adaptive changes occur in any of them.