From innervation density to tactile acuity 2: embryonic and adult pre- and postsynaptic somatotopy in the dorsal horn.

We tested the hypothesis that dorsal horn laminae III-IV cell receptive fields (RFs) are initially established in three steps: cutaneous axons penetrate the dorsal horn near their rostrocaudal (RC) levels of entry into the spinal cord. Their terminal branches distribute mediolaterally (ML) according to their relative distoproximal RF locations on the leg, and form nonselective synapses with nearby dorsal horn cell dendrites, establishing the initial dorsal horn cell RFs. Rootlet axon RFs in adult cats were used to approximate the RC entry levels of hindlimb skin input. Cord dorsum recordings of monosynaptic field potentials evoked by electrical skin stimulation provided the RC distributions of synaptic input. These were in close agreement. Simulated projections of all 22,000 hindlimb axons were similar to projections predicted from EPSP distributions, and with the observed projections of dorsal roots, cutaneous nerves, and individual axons. The simulated terminals were connected nonselectively to nearby dendrites of 135,000 simulated lamina III-IV cells whose dendritic surface area distributions were based on intracellularly stained cells. There was an overall similarity among pre- and postsynaptic embryonic and adult somatotopies, with a progressive transformation of RF angular location as a function of RC, ML dorsal horn location from an initial embryonic presynaptic concentric pattern to an adult postsynaptic radial one. The initial embryonic dorsal horn cell RF assembly hypothesis was supported by the simulations, as was the additional hypothesis that further refinement of connections would be necessary to establish sufficient selectivity to account for observed adult RFs and somatotopy.

The contributions of Lavoisier, Carnot, and Mayer to understanding heat illness.

Although heat illness has been described throughout recorded history, an understanding of its pathophysiology was only achieved in the 20th century. Lavoisier, Carnot, and Mayer described fundamental concepts about thermodynamics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that were crucial to the eventual understanding of heat illness. Lavoisier recognized that the human body was a heat engine. Carnot recognized that useful heat engines must dissipate heat. Mayer recognized that humans possess the capacity to regulate body heat. The fundamental contributions of Lavoisier, Carnot, and Mayer to the understanding of heat illness have gone largely unacknowledged.

From innervation density to tactile acuity: 1. Spatial representation.

We tested the hypothesis that the population receptive field representation (a superposition of the excitatory receptive field areas of cells responding to a tactile stimulus) provides spatial information sufficient to mediate one measure of static tactile acuity. In psychophysical tests, two-point discrimination thresholds on the hindlimbs of adult cats varied as a function of stimulus location and orientation, as they do in humans. A statistical model of the excitatory low threshold mechanoreceptive fields of spinocervical, postsynaptic dorsal column and spinothalamic tract neurons was used to simulate the population receptive field representations in this neural population of the one- and two-point stimuli used in the psychophysical experiments. The simulated and observed thresholds were highly correlated. Simulated and observed thresholds' relations to physiological and anatomical variables such as stimulus location and orientation, receptive field size and shape, map scale, and innervation density were strikingly similar. Simulated and observed threshold variations with receptive field size and map scale obeyed simple relationships predicted by the signal detection model, and were statistically indistinguishable from each other. The population receptive field representation therefore contains information sufficient for this discrimination.