Tactile Afferent Units with Small and Well Demarcated Receptive Fields in the Glabrous Skin Area of the Human Hand

1979 ◽  
pp. 129-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland S. Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Skin Area

scholarly journals Hypergravity within a critical period impacts on the maturation of somatosensory cortical maps and their potential for use-dependent plasticity in the adult

2016 ◽  
Vol 115 (6) ◽  
pp. 2740-2760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoh'i Zennou-Azogui ◽  
Nicolas Catz ◽  
Christian Xerri
Keyword(s):  
Critical Period ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Directional Sensitivity ◽  
Skin Area ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Dependent Plasticity ◽  
Short And Long Term

We investigated experience-dependent plasticity of somatosensory maps in rat S1 cortex during early development. We analyzed both short- and long-term effects of exposure to 2 G hypergravity (HG) during the first 3 postnatal weeks on forepaw representations. We also examined the potential of adult somatosensory maps for experience-dependent plasticity after early HG rearing. At postnatal day 22, HG was found to induce an enlargement of cortical zones driven by nail displacements and a contraction of skin sectors of the forepaw map. In these remaining zones serving the skin, neurons displayed expanded glabrous skin receptive fields (RFs). HG also induced a bias in the directional sensitivity of neuronal responses to nail displacement. HG-induced map changes were still found after 16 wk of housing in normogravity (NG). However, the glabrous skin RFs recorded in HG rats decreased to values similar to that of NG rats, as early as the end of the first week of housing in NG. Moreover, the expansion of the glabrous skin area and decrease in RF size normally induced in adults by an enriched environment (EE) did not occur in the HG rats, even after 16 wk of EE housing in NG. Our findings reveal that early postnatal experience critically and durably shapes S1 forepaw maps and limits their potential to be modified by novel experience in adulthood.

scholarly journals Specialized mechanoreceptor systems in rodent glabrous skin

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Walcher ◽  
Julia Ojeda-Alonso ◽  
Julia Haseleu ◽  
Maria K. Oosthuizen ◽  
Ashlee H. Rowe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Rodent Species ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Skin Area ◽  
Mechanical Stimuli ◽  
Orientation Sensitivity ◽  
Hairy Skin ◽  
Physiological Properties ◽  
Sensory Fibers ◽  
Very High

AbstractRodents use their forepaws to actively interact with their tactile environment. Studies on the physiology and anatomy of glabrous skin that makes up the majority of the forepaw are almost non-existent in the mouse. Here we developed a preparation to record from single sensory fibers of the forepaw and compared anatomical and physiological receptor properties to those of the hind paw glabrous and hairy skin. We found that the mouse forepaw skin is equipped with a very high density of mechanoreceptors; >3 fold more than hind paw glabrous skin. In addition, rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors that innervate Meissner’s corpuscles of the forepaw were several-fold more sensitive to slowly moving mechanical stimuli compared to their counterparts in the hind paw glabrous skin. All other mechanoreceptors types as well as myelinated nociceptors had physiological properties that were invariant regardless of which skin area they occupied. We discovered a novel D-hair receptor innervating a small group of hairs in the middle of the hind paw glabrous skin in mice. Glabrous D-hair receptors were direction sensitive albeit with an orientation sensitivity opposite to that described for hairy skin D-hair receptors. Glabrous D-hair receptors do not occur in all rodents, but are present in North American and African rodent species that diverged more than 65 million years ago. The function of these specialized hairs is unknown, but they are nevertheless evolutionarily very ancient. Our study reveals novel physiological specializations of mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin that likely evolved to facilitate tactile exploration.

scholarly journals Meissner corpuscles and their spatially intermingled afferents underlie gentle touch perception

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 368 (6497) ◽  
pp. eabb2751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole L. Neubarth ◽  
Alan J. Emanuel ◽  
Yin Liu ◽  
Mark W. Springel ◽  
Annie Handler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Microscopic Analysis ◽  
Sensorimotor Control ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Kinetic Properties ◽  
Electron Microscopic ◽  
Force Sensitivity ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Touch Perception ◽  
Lamellar Cell

Meissner corpuscles are mechanosensory end organs that densely occupy mammalian glabrous skin. We generated mice that selectively lacked Meissner corpuscles and found them to be deficient in both perceiving the gentlest detectable forces acting on glabrous skin and fine sensorimotor control. We found that Meissner corpuscles are innervated by two mechanoreceptor subtypes that exhibit distinct responses to tactile stimuli. The anatomical receptive fields of these two mechanoreceptor subtypes homotypically tile glabrous skin in a manner that is offset with respect to one another. Electron microscopic analysis of the two Meissner afferents within the corpuscle supports a model in which the extent of lamellar cell wrappings of mechanoreceptor endings determines their force sensitivity thresholds and kinetic properties.

scholarly journals Evidence for sparse C-tactile afferent innervation of glabrous human hand skin

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger H Watkins ◽  
Mariama Dione ◽  
Rochelle Ackerley ◽  
Helena Backlund Wasling ◽  
Johan Wessberg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Firing Frequency ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Hairy Skin ◽  
Ct Afferents ◽  
Touch Perception ◽  
The Face ◽  
Nerve Recordings ◽  
Future Work

C-tactile (CT) afferents were long-believed to be lacking in humans, but were subsequently shown to densely innervate the face and arm skin, and to a lesser extent the leg. Their firing frequency to stroking touch at different velocities has been correlated with ratings of tactile pleasantness. CT afferents were thought to be absent in human glabrous skin; however, tactile pleasantness can be perceived across the whole body, including glabrous hand skin. We used microneurography to investigate mechanoreceptive afferents in the glabrous skin of the human hand, during median and radial nerve recordings. We describe CTs found in the glabrous skin, with comparable characteristics to those in hairy arm skin, and detail recordings from three such afferents. CTs were infrequently encountered in the glabrous skin and we estimate that the ratio of recorded CTs relative to myelinated mechanoreceptors (1:80) corresponds to an absolute innervation density of around 7 times lower than in hairy skin. This sparse innervation sheds light on discrepancies between psychophysical findings of touch perception on glabrous skin and hairy skin, although the role of these CT afferents in the glabrous skin remains subject to future work.

Parallel processing of tactile information in the cerebral cortex of the cat: effect of reversible inactivation of SI on responsiveness of SII neurons

1992 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Turman ◽  
D. G. Ferrington ◽  
S. Ghosh ◽  
J. W. Morley ◽  
M. J. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Phase Locking ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Mechanical Stimulus ◽  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Mechanical Stimuli ◽  
Sinusoidal Vibration ◽  
Response Level ◽  
Reversible Inactivation ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Cortical Cooling

1. Localized cortical cooling was employed in anesthetized cats for the rapid reversible inactivation of the distal forelimb region within the primary somatosensory cortex (SI). The aim was to examine the responsiveness of individual neurons in the second somatosensory area (SII) in association with SI inactivation to evaluate the relative importance for tactile processing of the direct thalamocortical projection to SII and the indirect projection from the thalamus to SII via an intracortical path through SI. 2. Response features were examined quantitatively before, during, and after SI inactivation for 29 SII neurons, the tactile receptive fields of which were on the glabrous or hairy skin of the distal forelimb. Controlled mechanical stimuli that consisted of l-s trains of either sinusoidal vibration or rectangular pulses were delivered to the skin by means of small circular probes (4- to 8-mm diam). 3. Twenty-three of the 29 SII neurons (80%) showed no change in response level (in impulses per second) as a result of SI inactivation. These included seven neurons activated exclusively or predominantly by Pacinian corpuscle (PC) receptors, six that received hair follicle input, four activated by convergent input from hairy and glabrous skin, and six driven by dynamically sensitive but non-PC inputs from the glabrous skin. 4. Six SII neurons (20%), also made up of different functional classes, displayed a reduction in response to cutaneous stimuli when SI was inactivated. 5. Stimulus-response relations, constructed by plotting response level in impulses per second against the amplitude of the mechanical stimulus, showed that the effect of SI inactivation on individual neurons was consistent over the whole response range. 6. The reduced response level seen in 20% of SII neurons in association with SI inactivation cannot be attributed to direct spread of cooling from SI to the forelimb area of SII, as there was no evidence for a cooling-induced prolongation in SII spike waveforms, an effect that is known to precede any cooling-induced reduction in responsiveness. 7. As SI inactivation produced a fall in spontaneous activity in the affected SII neurons, we suggest that the inactivation removes a source of background facilitatory influence that arises in SI and affects a small proportion of SII neurons. 8. Phase-locking and therefore the precision of impulse patterning were unchanged in the responses of SII neurons to vibration during SI inactivation. This was the case whether response levels of neurons were reduced or unchanged by SI inactivation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Sensitivity to edges of mechanoreceptive afferent units innervating the glabrous skin of the human hand

1982 ◽  
Vol 244 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.S. Johansson ◽  
U. Landstro¨m ◽  
R. Lundstro¨m
Keyword(s):  
Glabrous Skin ◽  
Human Hand

Design of a Personalized Skin Grafting Methodology Using an Additive Biomanufacturing System Guided by 3D Photogrammetry

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Houzhu Ding ◽  
Filippos Tourlomousis ◽  
Azizbek Babakhanov ◽  
Robert C. Chang
Keyword(s):  
Skin Graft ◽  
3D Model ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Depth Map ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Skin Area ◽  
Burn Wound ◽  
Tissue Scaffold ◽  
Artificial Hand

In this paper, the authors propose a novel method whereby a prescribed simulated skin graft is 3D printed, followed by the realization of a 3D model representation using an open-source software AutoDesk 123D Catch to reconstruct the entire simulated skin area. The methodology is photogrammetry, which measures the 3D model of a real-word object. Specifically, the principal algorithm of the photogrammetry is structure from motion (SfM) which provides a technique to reconstruct a 3D scene from a set of images collected using a digital camera. This is an efficient approach to reconstruct the burn depth compared to other non-intrusive 3D optical imaging modalities (laser scanning, optical coherence tomography). Initially, an artificial human hand with representative dimensions is designed using a CAD design program. Grooves with a step-like depth pattern are then incorporated into the design in order to simulate a skin burn wound depth map. Then, the *.stl format file of the virtually wounded artificial hand is extruded as a thermoplastic material, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), using a commercial 3D printer. Next, images of the grooves representing different extents of burned injury are acquired by a digital camera from different directions with respect to the artificial hand. The images stored in a computer are then imported into AutoDesk 123D Catch to process the images, thereby yielding the 3D surface model of the simulated hand with a burn wound depth map. The output of the image processing is a 3D model file that represents the groove on the plastic object and thus the burned tissue area. One dimensional sliced sections of the designed model and reconstructed model are compared to evaluate the accuracy of the reconstruction methodology. Finally, the 3D CAD model is designed with a prescribed internal tissue scaffold structure and sent to the dedicated software of the 3D printing system to print the design of the virtual skin graft with biocompatible material poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document