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Heat is absolute, cold is relative

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In vivo imaging of the spinal cord provides insights into the coding of skin temperature. Intriguingly, while heat-responsive dorsal horn neurons encode absolute temperatures, cold-responsive neurons report relative drops.

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Figure 1: Imaging cold and heat responses in dorsal horn neurons using an in vivo spinal cord imaging preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Ine Vandewauw and Thomas Voets are in the Laboratory of Ion Channel Research, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.,

    Ine Vandewauw & Thomas Voets

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  1. Ine Vandewauw
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  2. Thomas Voets
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Correspondence to Thomas Voets.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Vandewauw, I., Voets, T. Heat is absolute, cold is relative. Nat Neurosci 19, 1188–1189 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4367

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