Altered spatial arrangement of layer V pyramidal cells in the mouse brain following prenatal low-dose X-irradiation. A stereological study using a novel three-dimensional analysis method to estimate the nearest neighbor distance distributions of cells in thick sections.

Prenatal X-irradiation, even at doses <1 Gy, can induce spatial disarray of neurons in the brains of offspring, possibly due to disturbed neuronal migration. Here we analyze the effects of prenatal low-dose X-irradiation using a novel stereological method designed to investigate the three-dimensional (3D) spatial arrangement of neurons in thick sections. Pregnant mice were X-irradiated with 50 cGy on embryonic day 13 or were sham-irradiated.