The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 86 No. 4 October 2001, pp. 2097-2101
Copyright ©2001 by the American Physiological Society

RAPID COMMUNICATION

Wavelets of Excitability in Sensory Neurons

 ¹Center for BioDynamics and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston 02215;  ²Department of Physiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01655; and  ³School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332

Hasty, Jeff, J. J. Collins, Kurt Wiesenfeld, and Peter Grigg. Wavelets of Excitability in Sensory Neurons. J. Neurophysiol. 86: 2097-2101, 2001. We have investigated variations in the excitability of mammalian cutaneous mechanoreceptor neurons. We focused on the phase dynamics of an action potential relative to a periodic stimulus, showing that the excitability of these sensory neurons has interesting nonstationary oscillations. Using a wavelet analysis, these oscillations were characterized through the depiction of their period as a function of time. It was determined that the induced oscillations are weakly dependent on the stimulus frequency, and that lower temperatures significantly reduce the frequency of the phase response. Our results reveal novel excitability properties in sensory neurons, and, more generally, could prove significant in the deduction of mechanistic attributes underlying the nonstationary excitability in neuronal systems. Since peripheral neurons feed information to the CNS, variable responses observed in higher regions may be generated in part at the site of sensory detection.