Distribution of activity in the spinal terminations of single hair follicle afferent fibers to somatotopically identified regions of the cat spinal cord.

Single-unit spike-triggered averaging has been used to study the distribution of activity in the central processes of 11 single hair follicle afferent (HFA) fibers in relation to the somatotopic organization of dorsal horn neurons (DHNs). Central responses could be recorded from all but one HFA, and the waveforms of these responses were similar to the biphasic, monophasic positive and compound terminal potentials (TPs), the triphasic, positive-negative-positive axonal (preterminal) potentials (APs), and the focal synaptic potentials (FSPs) described by other workers in different preparations. No central responses could be recorded from one HFA even though this axon was shown to be intact throughout the experiment and noise levels in the averaged records were below 3.1 microV. The spatial organization of TPs and APs mirrored the anatomical organization determined using intraaxonal staining only in that the region containing these potentials was a longitudinally orientated narrow (mean width = 405 microns) strip of dorsal horn. Within this strip large TPs, APs, and FSPs were usually found only in those regions in which the receptive field (RF) of the HFA was relatively central to the RFs of DHNs. The region in which the RFs of DHNs encompassed the RF of the HFA, the somatotopically appropriate region, was also organized into a longitudinally orientated strip of dorsal horn of approximately the same width as the strip containing TPs and APs. In any single experiment the strips formed by the somatotopically appropriate region and the TP-AP region occupied the same mediolateral position, but in contrast, the rostral and/or caudal boundaries of these strips often occurred at different levels along the dorsal horn. In some cases the TP-AP strip extended rostrally and/or caudally beyond the somatotopically appropriate region or ended at the same rostrocaudal level. In other cases the somatotopically appropriate region extended rostrally and/or caudally beyond the TP-AP strip. These results are discussed in relation to the rostrocaudal spread of the dendritic trees and the RF organization of DHNs. The results show clearly that in intact cats, anesthetized with alpha-chloralose, some HFAs give rise to collaterals in somatotopically inappropriate regions of the dorsal horn and that at least some parts of these collaterals are invaded by incoming action potentials. The question of whether some HFAs give rise to collaterals that are either infrequently invaded or not invaded at all is discussed.