Afferent Function in the Group of Nerve Fibers of Slowest Conduction Velocity

Abstract

The APS Journal Legacy Content is the corpus of 100 years of historical scientific research from the American Physiological Society research journals. This package goes back to the first issue of each of the APS journals including the American Journal of Physiology, first published in 1898. The full text scanned images of the printed pages are easily searchable. Downloads quickly in PDF format.

Non‐medullated fibres in the saphenous nerve which signal touch

“…By stimulating electrically the central end of the cat's saphenous nerve, and recording the action potential set up, Clark et al (1935) were able to show that the C fibres produced powerful circulatory and respiratory reflexes: they concluded that the non-medullated fibres were involved in signalling pain. Subsequent experiments on humans provided indirect corroborative evidence (see Bishop, 1946;Gasser, 1943;Landau & Bishop, 1953).…”

The mechanism of the vasomotor reflexes produced by stimulating mammalian sensory nerves

“…When the nerve is blocked by cold or asphyxia, the depressor reflex is abolished first, and the persisting pressor reflex often becomes larger than before. Asphyxia, in contrast to cocaine, affects the largest fibres first [Clark et al 1935]: the effect of cold on fibres of different sizes is not so clearly known.…”

“…When cocaine, an agent which inactivates the smallest fibres first [Gasser, 1935], is applied to the nerve proximal to the point stimulated, the pressor reflex is abolished before the depressor reflex.…”

“…The idea gets an added interest from some recent suggestions that these impulses are carried in at least two types of fibre, the delta fibre and the unmyelinated C fibre [Zotterman, 1939] Hughes & Gasser [1935] found that there is still a vasomotor reflex if all the fibres in the sensory nerve except the unmyelinated C fibres have been inactivated by asphyxiating the nerve. Their experiment has been repeated here under controlled conditions, to find the nature of this vasomotor reflex; and dissociation of fibres has also been produced here by cocaine, which affects the smallest fibres first [Gasser, 1935], and by cooling, which produces a sensory dissociation that is not closely related to fibre diameter [Bickford, 1939]. METHODS Cats were used for the experiments.…”

The effects of pressure on conduction in peripheral nerve

“…The experiments of Gasser & Erlanger [1929] suggest the former explanation; and there is direct evidence that the deformation caused by local pressure is most severe at the boundaries of the compressed part [Edwards & Cattell, 1928]. On the other hand, the experiments of Lewis, Pickering & Rothschild [1931] on man and those of Clark, Hughes & Gasser [1935] on animals showed that with quite low pressures a nerve in a limb may be blocked in from 16 to 40 min., and that ischaemia was the mechanism involved. These experiments have been confirmed by us [Bentley & Schlapp, 1943].…”