Luis Puelles

Luis Puelles
University of Murcia | UM · Department of Human Anatomy and Psychobiology

Doctor in Medicine and Surgery

About

399
Publications
79,555
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
25,190
Citations
Introduction
Luis Puelles is currently emeritus neuroanatomy professor at the Department of Human Anatomy and Psychobiology, University of Murcia (Spain). Luis continues doing research in topologic neuronatomic models and maps, brain development and evolution, and brain genoarchitectonics. The second fully revised and updated edition of his Chick Brain Stereotaxic Atlas has come out in 2019 (Academic Press). His major current projects involve analysis of mouse pretectal and prethalamic molecular structure, pallial subdivisions in general, and morphologic studies on the mouse amygdala.
Additional affiliations
January 2009 - present
University of Murcia
Position
  • Brain regionalization and genoarchitecture
Description
  • We map within the prosomeric model gene expression patterns in the developing brain of vertebrates (mouse, chick), studying field effects and fate map patterns, as well as neuronal migrations and axonal navigation.
August 1992 - present
UCSF University of California, San Francisco
Position
  • Standing collaboration with group in University of California, San Francisco
Description
  • We mapped various genes in the brain, and evolved the prosomeric model valid for all vertebrates. Genoarchitectonic patterning and regionalization of several brain areas (telencephalic pallium and subpallium, hypothalamus and diencephalon ).
January 1988 - December 1991
Independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
Position
  • Collaborative study with group on Universidad de La Laguna
Description
  • Performed joint studies on comparative development of the visual retinorecipient centers in reptiles, birds and mammals.
Education
November 1971 - May 1973
Universidad de Sevilla
Field of study
  • Neuroembryology
October 1965 - June 1971
University of Granada
Field of study
  • Medicine and Surgery

Publications

Publications (399)
Preprint
Full-text available
3D standard reference brains serve as key resources to understand the spatial organization of the brain and promote interoperability across different studies. However, unlike the adult mouse brain, the lack of standard 3D reference atlases for developing mouse brains has hindered advancement of our understanding of brain development. Here, we prese...
Article
The globus pallidus (GP) of primates is divided conventionally into distinct internal and external parts. The literature repeats since 1930 the opinion that the homolog of the primate internal pallidum in rodents is the hypothalamic entopeduncular nucleus (embedded within fiber tracts of the cerebral peduncle). To test this idea, we explored its hi...
Article
Full-text available
This essay reexamines molecular evidence supporting the existence of the ‘preisthmus’, a caudal midbrain domain present in vertebrates (studied here in the mouse). It is thought to derive from the embryonic m2 mesomere and appears intercalated between the isthmus (caudally) and the inferior colliculus (rostrally). Among a substantial list of gene e...
Preprint
Full-text available
This essay reexamines molecular evidence supporting the existence of the ‘preisthmus’, a caudal midbrain domain present in vertebrates (studied here in the mouse). It is held to derive from the embryonic m2 mesomere and appears intercalated between the isthmus (caudally) and the inferior colliculus (rostrally). Among a substantial list of gene expr...
Article
Full-text available
The inner ear is a complex three-dimensional sensorial structure with auditory and vestibular functions. This intricate sensory organ originates from the otic placode, which generates the sensory elements of the membranous labyrinth, as well as all the ganglionic neuronal precursors. How auditory and vestibular neurons establish their fate identiti...
Article
Full-text available
The ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH) is one of the most distinctive hypothalamic tuberal structures, subject of numerous classic and modern functional studies. Commonly, the adult VMH has been divided in several portions, attending to differences in cell aggregation, cell type, connectivity, and function. Consensus VMH partitions in the lite...
Article
Full-text available
The lateral hypothalamus (LH) has a heterogeneous cytoarchitectonic organization that has not been elucidated in detail. In this work, we analyzed within the framework of the prosomeric model the differential expression pattern of 59 molecular markers along the ventrodorsal dimension of the medial forebrain bundle in the mouse, considering basal an...
Article
Full-text available
Most of the studies on neurochemical mapping, connectivity, and physiology in the hypothalamic region were carried out in rats and under the columnar morphologic paradigm. According to the columnar model, the entire hypothalamic region lies ventrally within the diencephalon, which includes preoptic, anterior, tuberal, and mamillary anteroposterior...
Article
Full-text available
The retina is known to target many superficial areas in the brain. These have always been studied under the tenets of the classic columnar brain model, which was not designed to produce causal explanations, being functionally oriented. This has led over the years to a remarkable absence of understanding or even hypothetical thinking about why the o...
Article
Full-text available
Significance During brain development, neurons are generated by spatially and temporally distinct processes that remain to be fully characterized. The ganglionic eminences (GEs) in the embryonic subpallium give rise to GABAergic and cholinergic neuron lineages that form the basal ganglia or migrate to the cerebral cortex. Beyond a limited set of ca...
Article
Full-text available
In the developing brain, the phenomenon of neurogenesis is manifested heterotopically, that is, much the same neurogenetic steps occur at different places with a different timetable. This is due apparently to early molecular regionalization of the neural tube wall in the anteroposterior and dorsoventral dimensions, in a checkerboard pattern of more...
Article
Full-text available
This essay re-examines the singular case of the supposedly unique rostrally elongated notochord described classically in amphioxus. We start from our previous observations in hpf 21 larvae [Albuixech-Crespo et al., 2017] indicating that the brain vesicle has rostrally a rather standard hypothalamic molecular configuration. This correlates with the...
Article
Full-text available
The prosomeric model was postulated jointly by L. Puelles and J. L. R. Rubenstein in 1993 and has been developed since by means of minor changes and a major update in 2012. This article explains the progressive academic and scientific antecedents leading LP to this collaboration and its subsequent developments. Other antecedents due to earlier neur...
Article
Full-text available
The trigeminal column is a hindbrain structure formed by second order sensory neurons that receive afferences from trigeminal primary (ganglionic) nerve fibers. Classical studies subdivide it into the principal sensory trigeminal nucleus located next to the pontine nerve root, and the spinal trigeminal nucleus which in turn consists of oral, interp...
Article
Full-text available
The author worked before on the wide problem of the evolution of the vertebrate pallium. He proposed various Bauplan models based in the definition of a set of pallial sectors with characteristic (topologically invariant) mutual relationships and distinct molecular profiles. Out of one of these models, known as the ‘updated tetrapartite pallium mod...
Article
Neurons can change their classical neurotransmitters during ontogeny, sometimes going through stages of dual release. Here, we explored the development of the neurotransmitter identity of neurons of the avian nucleus isthmi parvocellularis (Ipc), whose axon terminals are retinotopically arranged in the optic tectum (TeO) and exert a focal gating ef...
Article
Full-text available
The tuberal hypothalamic ventral premamillary nucleus (VPM) described in mammals links olfactory and metabolic cues with mating behavior and is involved in the onset of puberty. We offer here descriptive and experimental evidence on a migratory phase in the development of this structure in mice at E12.5–E13.5. Its cells originate at the retromamill...
Article
Full-text available
The purinergic system is one of the oldest cell-to-cell communication mechanisms and exhibits relevant functions in the regulation of the central nervous system (CNS) development. Amongst the components of the purinergic system, the iono-tropic P2X7 receptor (P2X7R) stands out as a potential regulator of brain pathology and physiology. Thus, P2X7R...
Article
Full-text available
The prethalamic eminence (PThE), a diencephalic caudal neighbor of the telencephalon and alar hypothalamus, is frequently described in mammals and birds as a transient embryonic structure, undetectable in the adult brain. Based on descriptive developmental analysis of Tbr1 gene brain expression in chick embryos, we previously reported that three mi...
Article
Full-text available
We focus this report on the nucleus of the lateral olfactory tract (NLOT), a superficial amygdalar nucleus receiving olfactory input. Mixed with its Tbr1-expressing layer 2 pyramidal cell population (NLOT2), there are Sim1-expressing cells whose embryonic origin and mode of arrival remain unclear. We examined this population with Sim1-ISH and a Sim...
Article
Full-text available
The amygdala in mammals plays a key role in emotional processing and learning, being subdivided in pallial and subpallial derivatives. Recently, the cortical ring model and the pallial amygdalar radial model (Puelles et al. 2019; Garcia-Calero et al. 2020) described the pallial amygdala as an histogenetic field external to the allocortical ring, an...
Article
Full-text available
The interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) is a highly conserved limbic structure in the vertebrate brain, located in the isthmus and rhombomere 1. It is formed by various populations that migrate from different sites to the distinct domains within the IPN: the prodromal, rostral interpeduncular, and caudal interpeduncular nuclei. The aim here was to identi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Enhancers integrate transcription factor signaling pathways that drive cell fate specification in the developing brain. We used single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) to capture enhancer activity at single cell resolution and delineate specification of cells labeled by enhancers in mouse medial, lateral, and caudal ganglionic eminences (MGE, LGE, a...
Article
Full-text available
The hypothalamus is a heterogeneous rostral forebrain region that regulates physiological processes essential for survival, energy metabolism, and reproduction, mainly mediated by the pituitary gland. In the updated prosomeric model, the hypothalamus represents the rostralmost forebrain, composed of two segmental regions (terminal and peduncular hy...
Article
Full-text available
The radial dimension expands during central nervous system development after the proliferative neuroepithelium is molecularly patterned. The process is associated with neurogenesis, radial glia scaffolding, and migration of immature neurons into the developing mantle stratum. Radial histogenetic units, defined as a delimited neural polyclone whose...
Article
Full-text available
The interpeduncular nucleus (IPN) is a hindbrain structure formed by three main subdivisions, the prodromal (Pro) domain located at the isthmus (Ist), and the rostral and caudal interpeduncular domains (IPR, IPC) within rhombomere 1 (r1). Various cell populations can be detected in the IPN through the expression of the Nkx6.1, Otp, Otx2, Pax7, and/...
Article
Full-text available
Conventional anatomic models of the rodent (mammalian) amygdala are based on section planes oblique to its intrinsic radial glial organization. As a result, we still lack a model of amygdalar histogenesis in terms of radial units (progenitor domains and related radial migration and layering patterns). A radial model of the mouse pallial amygdala is...
Article
Full-text available
We present here a thorough and complete analysis of mouse P0‐P140 prethalamic histogenetic subdivisions and corresponding nuclear derivatives, in the context of local tract landmarks. The study used as fundamental material brains from a transgenic mouse line that expresses LacZ under the control of an intragenic enhancer of Dlx5 and Dlx6 (Dlx5/6‐La...
Article
Full-text available
The human claustrum, a major hub of widespread neocortical connections, is a thin, bilateral sheet of grey matter located between the insular cortex and the striatum. The subplate is a largely transient cortical structure that contains some of the earliest generated neurons of the cerebral cortex and has important developmental functions to establi...
Article
Full-text available
The prethalamic eminence (PThE) is the most dorsal subdomain of the prethalamus, which corresponds to prosomere 3 (p3) in the prosomeric model for vertebrate forebrain development. In mammalian and avian embryos, the PThE can be delimited from other prethalamic areas by its lack of Dlx gene expression, as well as by its expression of glutamatergic-...
Article
Full-text available
The inner ear is a complex three-dimensional sensory structure with auditory and vestibular functions. It originates from the otic placode, which generates the sensory elements of the membranous labyrinth and all the ganglionic neuronal precursors. Neuroblast specification is the first cell differentiation event. In the chick, it takes place over a...
Article
Full-text available
The prosomeric brain model contemplates progressive regionalization of the central nervous system (CNS) from a molecular and morphological ontogenetic perspective. It defines the forebrain axis relative to the notochord, and contemplates intersecting longitudinal (zonal, columnar) and transversal (neuromeric) patterning mechanisms. A checkboard pat...
Article
Full-text available
The components of the claustrum have been identified by gene expression in mice, but there is still uncertainty about the location of homologous components in primates. To aid interpretation of homologous elements between rodents and primates, we used a current understanding of pallial topology, species-specific telencephalic deformation, and gene...
Article
Full-text available
The traditional subdivision of the brain stem into midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata is based purely on the external appearance of the human brain stem. There is an urgent need to update the names of brain stem structures to be consistent with the discovery of rhomobomeric segmentation based on gene expression. The most important mistakes are t...
Article
Full-text available
Recent neuroanatomic concepts and terms referring to the non-telencephalic forebrain are presented and discussed, in context with the present scenario in which the old columnar paradigm is being substituted by the prosomeric model, largely on the basis of novel molecular and experimental evidence.
Article
Full-text available
Use of a segmental approach in the study of vestibular centers in the hindbrain improves morphological and functional understanding of this region controlled by Hox genes, among other molecular determinants. Here we review accrued data about segmental organization of vestibular afferents and efferents. Inner ear‐originated vestibular fibers enter t...
Article
Full-text available
Avian brain organization or brain Bauplan is identical with that of vertebrates in general. This essay visits avian studies that contained advances or discussions about brain organization, trying to explain critically what they contributed. In order to start from a specific background, the new prevailing paradigm as regards brain organization, the...
Article
Full-text available
The r4-derived territory is located in the pontine region of the brainstem, forming a wedge-shaped slice that broadens from the choroidal roof to the ventral midline. R4-derived neuronal populations migrate radially inside and tangentially outside this rhombomere, forming nuclei of the sensorimotor auditory, vestibular, trigeminal and reticular sys...
Article
Full-text available
This essay reviews step by step the conceptual changes of the updated tetrapartite pallium model from its tripartite and early tetrapartite antecedents. The crucial observations in mouse material are explained first in the context of assumptions, tentative interpretations, and literature data. Errors and the solutions offered to resolve them are ma...
Article
Full-text available
The vertebrate inner ear is a complex three-dimensional sensorial structure with auditory and vestibular functions. The molecular patterning of the developing otic epithelium creates various positional identities, consequently leading to the stereotyped specification of each neurosensory and non-sensory element of the membranous labyrinth. The Iroq...
Article
Full-text available
The classic columnar model of cranial nerve central representation assumes that all motor and sensory hindbrain neurons develop within four radial migration domains, held to be separated by a sulcal alar‐basal boundary (sulcus limitans). This essay reviews a number of developmental data that challenge these concepts. These results are interpreted w...
Article
Full-text available
The isthmus is recognized as the most rostral segment of the hindbrain in non-mammalian vertebrates . In mammalian embryos, transient Fgf8 expression defines the developing isthmic region, lying between the midbrain and the first rhombomere, but there has been uncertainty about the existence of a distinct isthmic segment in postnatal mammals. We at...
Article
Full-text available
We examined in detail the distribution of AZIN2 (antizyme inhibitor 2) expression in the adult mouse hindbrain and neighboring spinal cord. AZIN2, similar to previously known AZIN1, is a recently-discovered, a functional paralog of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC). Due to their structural similarity to ODC, both AZIN1 and AZIN2 counteract the inhibito...
Article
Author summary According to textbooks, vertebrate brains develop from a neural tube that rapidly becomes regionalized into the forebrain (which includes the secondary prosencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain, and hindbrain. These regions are then further subdivided; in particular, the diencephalon gives rise to the prethalamus, thalamus, and pret...
Data
Temporal expression of Nk2.1 during amphioxus development. Lateral views (A-F, F’), dorsal views (A’-E’), and schematic drawings (A”-F”) of the neural component of Nk2.1 gene expression pattern from 15 to 36 hours post-fertilization. Anterior is to the left except in F. Somites are indicated using red dotted lines. Scale bar = 50μm. (TIF)
Data
Additional gene markers used in this study. Other markers with neural expression used in this study in lateral (A-G) or dorsal views (A’-G’), and drawings of the neural component of each gene expression pattern with the relative position of somites (A”-G’). Markers with no expression in the amphioxus developing CNS at this stage are showed in later...
Data
Probes of amphioxus used for in situ hybridization. (XLSX)
Data
Expression of key gene markers at early neural stage. (TIF)
Data
Information on the neural expression of genes used in this study. (XLSX)
Data
Probes of zebrafish used for in situ hybridization. (XLSX)
Article
Full-text available
Our previous analysis of progenitor domains in the pretectum of Xenopus revealed three molecularly distinct anteroposterior subdivisions, identified as precommissural (PcP), juxtacommissural (JcP), and commissural (CoP) histogenetic domains (Morona et al. [2011] J Comp Neurol 519:1024–1050). Here we analyzed at later developmental stages the nuclei...
Article
Full-text available
The inner ear is a morphologically complex sensory structure with auditory and vestibular functions. The developing otic epithelium gives rise to neurosensory and non-sensory elements of the adult membranous labyrinth. Extrinsic and intrinsic signals manage the patterning and cell specification of the developing otic epithelium by establishing line...
Chapter
Full-text available
The pallium of birds and reptiles is analyzed in detail with regard to the classification of its natural subdivisions on the basis of the tetrapartite pallium model proposed in 2014 by the first author. The possibility to use genoarchitectural data for this task is connected with the fundamental criteria of homology, namely conserved topological po...