A Bio-Rad MRC 1024 confocal laser-scanning microscope (Hercules, CA) equipped with a krypton-argon laser and an Olympus IX-70 inverted microscope (Melville, NY) was used to image localization of FITC (488nm laser line excitation; 522/35 emission filter), texas red (568nm excitation; 605/32 emission filter) of Cy5 (647 excitation; 680/32 emission filter). Optical sections (Z=0.5μm) of confocal epifluorescence images were acquire sequentially using a 40x oil objective (Number or aperture, NA=1.35), or a 60x oil objective (NA=1.40) with Bio-Rad LaserSharp v3.2 software. ImageJ NIH, software was subsequently used to merge images. Merge images were processed in Photoshop 7.0 with minimal manipulations of contrast. For cell counting, cells were counted in the SVZ the postnatal day 8 (P8) and adult mice P90. At least 3 different brains for each strain and each experimental condition were analyzed and counted. Cell counting was performed blindly and tissue sections were matched across samples. The analysis of the SVZ was performed at different anterior-posterior and dorso-ventral levels of the lateral ventricle. An average of 15–20 sections was quantifiedusing unbiased stereological morphometric analysis for the SVZ to obtain
