Our lab at The University of Texas Medical Branch is concerned with the architecture of the normal spinal cord and the changes that take place following either central or peripheral lesions.
B.A. , University of Chicago, 1951 M.D., Harvard, 1956 Member, Marine Biomedical Institute Professor, Department of Anatomy & Neurosciences
and Physiology & Biophysics Cell Biology Graduate Program In particular we have found that a lesion of a single peripheral nerve changes the architecture of the dorsal horn in that large primary afferent fibers sprout into those parts of the spinal cord that normally receive only fine fiber input. This sprouting is not dependent on regeneration, and the sprouting fibers make synapses on postsynaptic targets. Thus, since the architecture of the dorsal horn changes regardless of whether nerve regeneration occurs or not and since these changes appear to be associated with the establishment of new synaptic connections, even minor procedures such as nerve biopsies in humans might result in central structural changes. Furthermore, such changes could result in the activation by A fibers of spinal cells that normally receive only C fiber input. This may contribute to the generation of the intractable touch-evoked pain that can follow nerve injury. The next few years will be spent working on the quantification and the mechanisms of these changes.
This picture, particularly E, demonstrates large fiber sprouting into areas that normally receive pain input in the spinal cord
Woolf, C.J., Shortland, P. and Coggeshall, R.E. Peripheral nerve injury triggers central sprouting of myelinated afferents. Nature, 355:75-78, 1992.
Coggeshall, R.E. A consideration of neural counting methods. TINS, 15:9-14, 1992.
Woolf, C.J., Shortland, P, Reynolds, M., Ridings, J., Doubell, T. and Coggeshall, R.E. The reorganization of central terminals of myelinated primary afferents in the right dorsal horn following peripheral axotomy. J. Comp. Neurol., submitted 1995.
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