Selective decline in the prevalence of slowly adapting type I mechanoreceptors during development

Merkel nerve endings are identified physiologically as slowly adapting type I mechanoreceptor units. They are important for fine acuity tactile perception. We examined the effect of age on the electrophysiological availability of different types of slowly adapting mechanoreceptor units. Using 6–50 week old rats, we observed an obvious decline with age in the probability of recording from St I units of the deep vibrissal nerve. The precipitous decline occurred between ages 6–14 weeks and then stabilized. By contrast, the prevalence of St II units, the other type of slowly adapting mechanoreceptor, remained constant over the age range studied. These observations correlate with anatomical findings reported elsewhere.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2018-08-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2018.04.001PMID 29653151PMCID 6053600
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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