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The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 81 No. 6 June 1999, pp. 2753-2763
Copyright ©1999 by the American Physiological Society
Department of Physiology, Göteborg University, SE 405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Vallbo, Å. B.,
H. Olausson, and
J. Wessberg.
Unmyelinated Afferents Constitute a Second System Coding Tactile
Stimuli of the Human Hairy Skin. J. Neurophysiol. 81: 2753-2763, 1999.
Unmyelinated afferents constitute a second system coding tactile
stimuli of the human hairy skin. Impulses were recorded from unmyelinated afferents innervating the forearm skin of human subjects using the technique of microneurography. Units responding to innocuous skin deformation were selected. The sample (n = 38) was
split into low-threshold units (n = 27) and
high-threshold units (n = 11) on the basis of three
distinctive features, i.e., thresholds to skin deformation, size of
response to innocuous skin deformation, and differential response to
sharp and blunt stimuli. The low-threshold units provisionally were
denoted tactile afferents on the basis of their response properties,
which strongly suggest that they are coding some feature of tactile
stimuli. They exhibited, in many respects, similar functional
properties as described for low-threshold C-mechanoreceptive units in
other mammals. However, a delayed acceleration, not previously
demonstrated, was observed in response to long-lasting innocuous
indentations. It was concluded that human hairy skin is innervated by a
system of highly sensitive mechanoreceptive units with unmyelinated
afferents akin to the system previously described in other mammals. The
confirmation that the system is present in the forearm skin and not
only in the face area where it first was identified suggests a largely general distribution although there are indications that the tactile C
afferents may be lacking in the very distal parts of the limbs. The
functional role of the system remains to be assessed although physiological properties of the sense organs invite to speculations that the slow tactile system might have closer relations to limbic functions than to cognitive and motor functions.
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