postsynaptic dorsal column spinal cord stimulation

#Postsynaptic dorsal column spinal cord stimulation skin#

These areas occupy the lowest level of the touch hierarchy, and combine to form a more indirect touch pathway into the brain. However, Ginty and his team wondered if and how the spinal cord and brainstem are involved in processing touch information. There, other neurons relay touch information to the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex - the highest level of the touch hierarchy - where it is processed into sensation

#Postsynaptic dorsal column spinal cord stimulation skin#

The historical view of touch is that sensory neurons in the skin encounter a touch stimulus such as pressure or vibration and send this information in the form of electrical impulses that travel directly from the skin to the brainstem. “This detailed understanding of tactile sensation ― that is, feeling the world through contact with the skin - may have profound implications for understanding how disease, disorder, and injury can affect our ability to interact with the environment around us,” said James Gnadt, program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which provided part of the funding for the studies. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and the senior author on both papers.Īlthough 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. We hadn’t fully appreciated before how these areas contribute to the brain’s representation of vibration, pressure, and other features of tactile stimuli,” said David Ginty, the Edward R. “These studies focus the spotlight on the spinal cord and the brainstem as sites where touch information is integrated and processed to convey different types of touch. 23 in Nature, researchers established that direct and indirect touch pathways work together, converging in the brainstem to shape how touch is processed. 4 in Cell, shows that specialized neurons in the spinal cord form a complex network that processes light touch - think the brush of a hand or a peck on the cheek - and sends this information to the brainstem.