Squirrel Monkey Lateral Thalamus. II. Viscerosomatic Convergent Representation of Urinary Bladder, Colon, and Esophagus
The Journal of Neuroscience, November 1994, 14(11): 6796-6614 Squirrel Monkey Lateral Thalamus. II. Viscerosomatic Convergent Representation of Urinary Bladder, Colon, and Esophagus Johannes Briiggemann, Ting Shi, and A. Vaina Apkarian Department of Neurosurgery, Computational Neuroscience Program, SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse, Syracuse, New York 13210 The response properties of 106 visceroceptive lateral tha- the thalamus. Visceral primary afferents constitute a unique lamic neurons were investigated in anesthetized squirrel population distinct from the somatic primary afferents(e.g., less monkeys. Most neurons were located in the ventral posterior than 0.5% of the pelvic afferents branch and innervate the skin lateral nucleus (VPL), and a smaller number of cells was also and viscera; HPbler et al., 1988). Also the coding strategiesused found in a variety of thalamic nuclei around VPL. Ninety by the somatic and visceral systems in the PNS are distinct. (65%) of these cells responded to distension of the urinary Somatic primary afferents have different fiber populations sub- bladder, the distal colon, and/or the lower esophagus. The serving various stimulus modalities (e.g., touch, nociception). majority of the visceral-responsive cells also had convergent In contrast, many mechanoceptive primary visceral afferents somatic and multivisceral responses (71% of the 65%). A have “intensity-coding” properties, that is, monotonic stimulus small population (6%) was visceral specific; that is, these responsecurves over both innocuous and noxious ranges(see, neurons were not activated with somatic stimuli. Visceral e.g., Senguptaet al., 1989, 1990). Intensity-coding somatic pri- responses were excitatory, inhibitory, or mixed, and most mary afferents have not been found in the normal somatic PNS.
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