Regional and laminar distribution of silver stained cell bodies in the rat brain

Classical mapping studies relied on the analysis of histologically processed sections from formalin-fixed brains for the identification of borders between cortical areas or of the boundaries of subcortical nuclei. Differences in the regional and laminar distribution patterns of neurotransmitter receptors are known to complement and extend the insights into the structural organization of the brain, which are provided by cytoarchitectonic observations alone. Since the method of quantitative *in vitro* receptor autoradiography requires processing of unfixed, shock frozen brains, we here present a modification of a silver cell body histological staining which can be applied to cryosections neighbouring those destined to labelling of receptors. The histological staining resembles a Nissl staining, but yields a higher contrast between cell bodies and neuropil, and can also be used for quantitative approaches to cytoarchitectonic mapping. The present dataset provides high-resolution digitized images of coronal sections through the rat brain that were processed for the visualization of cell bodies, and which complement a series processed for the visualization of 19 different receptor binding sites from multiple neurotransmitter systems.