Cholinergic nuclei, central nervous system

In the peripheral nervous system, ACh is found as the neurotransmitter in the autonomic ganglia, the parasympathetic postganglionic synapse, and the neuromuscular endplate. Cholinergic neurons in the central nervous system are either wide ranging projection neurons or short ranging interneurons in (1) the basal forebrain (septum, diagonal band, nucleus basalis of Meynert) projects to the entire cortex, the hippocampus,... 

Hess s model is all the more prescient because, at the time of its articulation, the cellular and molecular neurobiology of the central instantiation of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system were completely unknown. He had to infer their existence from his knowledge of the peripheral system and from the effects of his manipulation of the brain upon their outflow. The breakthrough came only in the early 1960s, when Anica Dahlstrom, K]ell Euxe, and others identified the norepinephrine containing cells of the locus coeruleus and the serotonin containing cells of the midline raphe nucleus. And it was even later when Marcel Mesulam and others mapped the central cholinergic neuronal system. 

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