Cell responses evoked by tooth pulp stimulation above the marginal layer of the cat's trigeminal nucleus caudalis.

In cats anesthetized with urethane, all-or-nothing, synaptically evoked recordings were made from 80 separate units in the descending spinal tract of the trigeminal nerve above the left trigeminal nucleus caudalis, at depths not exceeding 50 micrometer from the surface of the medulla. The units were excited by the left upper (21), left lower (25), either (28), or only on simultaneous stimulation of both (six) canine tooth pulps. There was no somototopic distribution. The latency of responses ranged from 4 to 82 msec. For the group of 28 units excited by upper and lower tooth pulps, there was close matching of response latencies from the two teeth. An abrupt decrease in latency upon increasing stimulation strength ("jumping"), and a gradual increase in latency during repetitive stimulation at a frequency between 1 and 20 Hz ("drifting") was characteristic of most, but not all, responses. Units evoked by stimulation of the inferior dental or infraorbital nerves had similar characteristics. Stimulation of a tooth pulp at threshold for a particular unit was used to test the excitability of that unit after suprathreshold stimulation of the same or a different canine tooth pulp. Stimulation of the upper left canine tooth pulp was generally only facilitatory, while stimulation of the lower left canine tooth pulp was initially facilitatory and later inhibitory. Stimulation of the upper or lower right canine tooth pulps did not excite but could inhibit units excited by the left canine tooth pulps. There was a significant correlation between the frequency at which a unit would follow repetitive stimulation and the duration of the inhibition generated by the first of a pair of stimuli. Long inhibition was associated with poor frequency following.