Pair of studies uncover surprising new roles for spinalcord and brainstem in touch harvardmed CellCellPress nature
—including how the spinal cord and brainstem are involved in receiving, processing, and transmitting signals—have remained poorly understood.
Although the studies were conducted in mice, mechanisms for touch are largely conserved across species, including humans, which means the basics of touch processing could be useful for scientists studying human conditions such as neuropathic pain characterized by touch dysfunction. However, Ginty and his team wondered if and how the spinal cord and brainstem are involved in processing touch information. These areas occupy the lowest level of the touch hierarchy, and combine to form a more indirect touch pathway into the brain.
"Analogous to research on the visual system, these two papers address how touch information coming from the skin is processed in the spinal cord and brainstem before it moves up the touch hierarchy to more complex brain regions," Ginty said.paper, the researchers used a technique they developed to simultaneously record the activity of many different neurons in the spinal cord as mice experienced various types of touch.
"We think this information on how touch is encoded in the spinal cord, which is the first site in the touch hierarchy, is important for understanding fundamental aspects of touch processing," Chirila said., scientists focused on the next step in the touch hierarchy: the brainstem. They explored the relationship between the direct pathway from
"The idea is that these two pathways converge in the brainstem with neurons that can encode both vibration and intensity, so you can shape responses of those neurons based on how much direct and indirect input you have," Turecek explained. In other words, if brainstem neurons have more direct than indirect input, they communicate more vibration than intensity, and vice versa.
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