Further investigations of enzyme activities in the rat brain that survive fixation in cold dilute formaldehyde1 have demonstrated high levels of nucleosidediphosphatase activity in the Golgi apparatus of neurons.2,3 The classical metal impregnation methods for staining the Golgi apparatus are generally tedious and fickle, and they preclude parallel enzymological studies.4 The method used in this study3 rapidly visualizes the Golgi apparatus in frozen sections and permits cytochemical studies of other cell organelles in the same or parallel sections.5
It has been shown that acid phophataserich granules (lysosomes) undergo changes early in the course of neuronal necrobiosis produced by anoxia6 and diphtheria toxin.7 With the availability of a cytochemical method for demonstrating the Golgi apparatus and its nucleosidediphosphatase activity, it is now possible to compare alterations in these 2 related organelles during neuronal pathology.
This paper describes the neuronal Golgi apparatus, as seen in