I was just thinking about trying some degeneration stains the other
day! Fink-Heimer is an old silver staining method for degenerating nerve
terminals.
Fink and Heimer 1967 Brain Research 4 369-374
There are many variations. The literature search that I did came up with
lots of recipes (although I have not actually used any of them yet)
The paper with the prettiest pictures was:
Gallyas et al,1980 Stain Technology 55:5 299-306.
Gallyas has done a lot of work on neuroanatomical silver stains. His
stains use a different physical developer than other people, with sodium
carbonate instead of gum arabic as a chelator. I use his myelin stain
that uses the same developer, and I think it is very good. So if you are
interested in staining degenerating terminals, I would recommend giving
this paper a read for yourself.
Jamie
