The neurologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States, to discover how touch sensations flowed from the hair on the skin to the nervous system. These new findings open new doors to understanding how the brain collects and processes information from the hairy skin.
"You can bend a hair on your arms and feel it. But how can you distinguish the touch of the wind, raindrops, or poke a stick?" says David Ginty, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins. "Now we begin to understand how all the stimuli are processed."
Ginty and his colleagues are studying how the nervous system develops and interconnected. According to Ginty, there are more than 20 broad classes of cells called nerve cells in the skin that recognize mekanosensorik excitatory, the temperature began to feel ill. Six of them recognize the role of stimulation in the form of a light touch.
But until now the only way nerve cells communicate is by taking the electrical signals from other cells. This mechanism occurs because each cell type produces a different signal depending on the type of stimulation received.
Through tests on mice, researchers found that each hair type has a specific match with the nerve endings associated with it. "This makes any type of hair is a unique organ mekanosensorik," says Ginty.
The research team also found that each type of hair spread out with distance and the pattern of evenly distributed throughout the skin. But the team still curious about how all the touch stimulation of the hair is collected and sent to the brain.
They found that nerve cells, which connects every part of haired skin, marching in a column arranged in the spinal cord. Column nerve cells that lies lined with columns of other nerve cells that respond to the different parts of the skin.
The team estimates there are 3000-5000 column in the spinal cord of rats. Each column serves to accommodate the stimulus from 100 to 150 hair follicles.
So, how the brain interprets what is felt every hair follicle? Ginty suspect column organization is key to know the various input stimuli processed before being delivered to the brain.
Although human hair is thick, like a rat, Ginty believe a lot of similar structure owned by a mouse is also found in humans. "This research and development of cell marker tool opens many doors for new research in understanding the touch and other senses," he said. *** [SCIENCEDAILY | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 3766]
