The ability of inhibitory controls to 'switch-off' activity in dorsal horn convergent neurones in the rat.

Unitary extracellular recordings were made from 51 convergent neurones in the dorsal horn of the lumbar spinal cords of urethane anaesthetized rats. All the cells tested responded to sustained noxious mechanical stimulation of their receptive fields on the ipsilateral hindpaw, but only 26/49 gave tonic responses lasting for more than 5 min. In all 26 cells, these tonic responses were depressed by diffuse noxious inhibitory controls (DNIC) triggered by applying noxious conditioning stimuli elsewhere on the body. In seven cells, the inhibitory effects could involve a complete abolition of activity and in five cells, when this occurred, activity did not return during 2.5-6-min periods of observation following removal of the conditioning stimuli. However, in those cases, activity could be restored to pre-conditioning levels by further manipulations of the receptive field-either removal and re-application of the original stimulus or brief application of an additional stimulus. These results show that inhibitory controls can 'switch-off' activity in at least a small proportion of dorsal horn convergent neurones. One possible explanation would be that in these neurones, responses to sustained noxious stimuli may depend on activity in a positive feedback circuit within the central nervous system, which when interrupted, may be restored only by additional afferent inputs. The existence of such a loop could also explain the finding of convergent convergent neurones which initially were not spontaneously active but which after stimulation of their receptive fields, developed on-going discharges which could be switched-off by DNIC.