Morphological investigation of the deep pineal of the rat.

The results presented here reveal that in adult Sprague-Dawley and Wistar rats the pineal gland represents a complex rather than a single organ. Regularly one can distinguish (i) pineal tissue in the intercommissural region as a deep pineal, (ii) a superficial pineal, which represents the major part of the pineal complex, and (iii) nearly always a parenchymal stalk of variable length. The volume of the deep pineal with the adjacent parenchymal stalk exhibits great interindividual variation. It amounts to 127 +/- 39 X 10(5) mum3 (mean +/- standard deviation). The histological appearance of the deep and superficial pineal tissue is fairly similar. The intrinsic cells of the deep and superfici…