University of Virginia Health System 1 article published in JoVE Neuroscience Preparation of Newborn Rat Brain Tissue for Ultrastructural Morphometric Analysis of Synaptic Vesicle Distribution at Nerve Terminals Bianca Ferrarese1,2, Nadia Lunardi1 1Department of Anesthesiology, University of Virginia Health System, 2Department of Anesthesiology, Universita' degli Studi di Padova We describe procedures for processing newborn rat brain tissue to obtain high-resolution electron micrographs for morphometric analysis of synaptic vesicle distribution at nerve terminals. The micrographs obtained with these methods can also be used to study the morphology of a number of other cellular components and their dimensional structural relationships.