1987; Tremere et al. to determine the location of the recorded neurons with respect to the MCPO/SI area and whether they were positive for ChAT immunoreactivity (Arrigoni et al. 2010). To determine whether Cy3-p75NTR-IgG was internalized by only cholinergic neurons within the BF, we used seven icv Cy3-p75NTR-IgG-injected mice for ChAT double immunolabeling studies. One day after the icv injections the mice were deeply anesthetized with isoflurane and perfused transcardially with 20 ml of PBS followed by 20 ml of 10% formalin. Brains were removed, postfixed overnight in 10% GW-1100 formalin, equilibrated in 20% sucrose and 0.02% sodium azide in PBS, and then cut into 40-m sections on a freezing microtome. We found that the Cy3-p75NTR-IgG labeling was mostly lost following overnight treatment in 0.3% Triton X-100; therefore, for these experiments, the sections were pretreated in PBT for only 1 1 h and then incubated overnight in ChAT primary antibodies (1:1,000; Chemicon International/Millipore) in PBS. The next day, the sections were incubated Rabbit Polyclonal to GSK3alpha (phospho-Ser21) for 2 h in donkey Alexa Fluor488 anti-goat secondary antibodies (1:500; Jackson ImmunoResearch) in PBS. The sections were mounted on gelatin-coated slices and coverslipped. Cy3-p75NTR-IgG-positive cells and ChAT-positive cells were counted bilaterally in 3 adjacent 40-m sections using a 10 objective lens. Cell counting was done using rectangular counting GW-1100 boxes (1.4 1 mm) placed in the medial septum (MS; AP = 0.68 mm from bregma), the horizontal limb of the diagonal band GW-1100 (hDB; AP = 0.62 mm), the magnocellular preoptic nucleus (MCPO; AP = 0.14 mm), and the substantia innominata (SI; AP = ?0.1 mm) (Franklin and Paxinos 1997). The goat polyclonal antibody against ChAT used in this study was purchased from Chemicon International/Millipore (AB144; lot no. JC1618187) (Saito et al. 2009). The rabbit polyclonal antibody against the Lucifer yellow dye was purchased from Molecular Probes/Invitrogen (A-5750; lot no. 764816). It was raised against Lucifer yellow, and the specificity of immunostaining for Lucifer yellow was indicated by the lack of detectable immunostaining in unrecorded slices. For all secondary antibody immunohistochemical controls, the primary antibodies were omitted and the tissue showed no immunoreactivity above background. RESULTS In the BF, GW-1100 the neurotrophin receptor p75 (p75NTR) is expressed almost exclusively on cholinergic neurons across species, including rats and mice (Rossner et al. 2000; Springer et al. 1987; Tremere et al. 2000). In recent years, a number of studies have used fluorescent conjugated anti-rat p75NTR antibodies (192IgG) to label in vivo BF cholinergic neurons in rats (Arrigoni et al. 2006; Hartig et al. 1998; Wu et al. 2000). More recently, a new polyclonal fluorescent antibody against murine p75NTR (Cy3-p75NTR-IgG; Advanced GW-1100 Targeting Systems) has become available. To determine whether this antibody specifically labels the cholinergic population within the BF and can therefore be used for in vitro electrophysiological recordings in mice, we injected seven mice in the lateral cerebroventricle with anti-murine Cy3-p75NTR-IgG and used them for a ChAT-immunohistochemical double-label study. From the MS to the SI region, we found that 50% of ChAT-positive neurons were labeled with Cy3-p75NTR-IgG (Table 1 and Fig. 1). More importantly we found that Cy3-p75NTR-IgGs were internalized almost exclusively by ChAT-positive neurons. Only 3C5% of the Cy3-p75NTR-IgG-labeled neurons in.