Mechanism of Sensory Transduction in Cold Receptors

Abstract

Sensory receptors are the interface between environment and the nervous system; it is their task to provide the information which is ultimately necessary for the organism to maintain the stability of its biological function. The processes which transduce a stimulus pattern into a neuronal signal therefore have been, and certainly will remain, an important focus of research. However, our knowledge of these processes is not of the same degree for different sensory systems. Due to the recent methodological progress in neurophysiology and molecular biology, signal transduction is fairly well understood in the visual, auditory, and gustatory system, but less is known of other sensory receptors, including all those located within the skin, i.e., mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors. The study of these sensors is impeded by their low density, their poor accessibility, and by the coexistence within the same area of apparently uniform structures which nevertheless serve different modalities, and exhibit distinctive stimulus specificity.