“School of Cognitive Sciences”
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| Paper IPM / Cognitive Sciences / 7462 |
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| Abstract: | |||||||
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In the present study, we used computer-controlled mechanical displacement of paired whiskers in normal and C-fiber depleted rats to quantitatively examine the role of C-fibers in the receptive field properties of barrel cortical cells. In rodents when adjacent whiskers are stimulated prior to the main whisker, responses to the main whisker are inhibited, the degree of inhibition being a function of the inter-deflection intervals. The adjacent-whisker evoked inhibition of barrel cells in normal and C-fiber depleted rats using neonatal capsaicin treatment were examined by stimulation of the adjacent whisker zero, 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 ms prior to the main whisker deflection. C-fiber depletion reduced the suppressive effect of paired whisker stimulation at all of the tested inter-stimulus intervals without changing response latencies. The main effect was observed during the later phase of response (about 13-17ms from stimulus onset) and not during the initial responses (7-12ms). These results suggest that the inhibitory receptive field properties of low-threshold mechanical somatosensory cells are influenced by C-fibers probably with a cortical origin.
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