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The spinal afferent pathways of conditioned reflexes to cutaneous stimuli in the dog

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Summary

Dogs were conditioned to respond to cutaneous stimulation of either hindlimb by a forelimb movement in order to test the function of various pathways in the spinal cord. After maximum performance had been achieved in the preoperative training chronic lesions were made at low thoracic level and the effect determined in postoperative testing.

After transection of the dorsal part of the lateral funiculus (DLF) on one side to interrupt the spinocervical tract a transient impairment of reflexes elicited by light tactile (puffs of air) stimuli from that side was observed. No changes of the reflexes were observed after unior bilateral transections of the dorsal columns. However, a dorsal column transection performed secondarily to a unilateral DLF transection, or vice versa, severely impaired, sometimes permanently, the conditioned reflexes to light tactile stimuli from the side of the combined DLF and dorsal column transection. Conditioned reflexes elicited by a coarse (50 Hz electric current) cutaneous stimulus were unaffected by DLF and dorsal column transections, whether single or in combination.

It is concluded that the main spinal afferent pathway of the conditioned reflexes to light tactile stimuli is the spinocervical tract and that the dorsal column pathway probably is of secondary importance. The reflexes elicited by the coarse cutaneous stimulus do not depend primarily on either pathway.

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  1. Department of Physiology, University of Göteborg, Sweden

    Ulf Noeesell

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  1. Ulf Noeesell
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Noeesell, U. The spinal afferent pathways of conditioned reflexes to cutaneous stimuli in the dog. Exp Brain Res 2, 269–282 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00236718

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