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Facilitation and depression of muscle stretch receptors by repetitive antidromic stimulation, adrenaline and asphyxia
Author(s) -
Paintal A. S.
Publication year - 1959
Publication title -
the journal of physiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.802
H-Index - 240
eISSN - 1469-7793
pISSN - 0022-3751
DOI - 10.1113/jphysiol.1959.sp006286
Subject(s) - antidromic , facilitation , stimulation , depression (economics) , asphyxia , neuroscience , medicine , psychology , anesthesia , keynesian economics , economics
In the preceding paper (Paintal, 1959), it has been shown that it is possible to study certain local events in muscle stretch receptors, even though the action potentials are recorded at a distance, by applying brief pulls to the muscle and noting changes in the pull-impulse latency. Further, it was shown that, as in the Pacinian corpuscle (Diamond, Gray & Sato, 1956; Loewenstein, 1958), there was no detectable propagation of impulses in the non-myelinated ending. It was also suggested that one could study the effects of drugs on the recovery of excitability of the endings following an antidromic impulse. This was possible because of the reproducible and constant relation of the curves of pull-impulse latency and antidromically conditioned pull-impulse latency to each other under constant conditions, so that any change in this relation would reflect a change in recovery processes following an antidromic impulse. Using this approach the effects of three agents, repetitive antidromic stimulation, adrenaline, and asphyxia have been studied. The term recovery or recovery processes has been used to designate all processes which raise the excitability of the ending from zero immediately after arrival of an antidromic impulse at the ending to maximum with a certain time course. If these processes are accelerated recovery is enhanced and vice versa. Accordingly, other things being the same, reduction of the antidromically conditioned pull-impulse latency will indicate enhancement of recovery. The term post-tetanic antidromic depression used in this paper refers to the reduction or absence of the steady discharge for variable periods after a train of antidromic stimuli.