FORMATIO RETICULARIS /RETICULAR FORMATION/

Diffuse cell formation system, distributed longitudinally in the brain stem in the extent between spinal cord and hypothalamus, mainly in the vicinity of cranial nerves nuclei, is a very old structure as for development. It covers a great deal of nuclei and connections, which we extract as follows:

NUCLEI of RF

LINKAGE OF RF

  1. Afferent

  1. Efferent

GENERAL IMPORTANCE

RF assures complex linkage of cranial nerves to one another and to other areas allowing vital reflexes from birth on (eye blink, lacrimation, cough, suck, salivatory, swallowing, secretory for glands …)

Its activating system influences cerebral cortex ascendently and medulla spinalis descendently. The inhibiting system shows similar activity in caudal and ventral parts of RF in serotonergic nuclei

Linkage of pons: tractus corticopontini - nuclei pontis - tactus pontocerebellares

Linkage of olive: olive receives tracts from medulla spinalis, nucleus ruber, RF and cerebral cortex and interconnects them to tractus olivocerebellares called climbing fibres as a whole.