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تسجيل

Cutaneous Mechanoreceptors

المؤلف:  Kim E. Barrett, Susan M. Barman, Heddwen L. Brooks, Jason X.-J. Yuan

المصدر:  Ganongs Review of Medical Physiology

الجزء والصفحة:  25th E, P160

2026-10-06

127

Sensory receptors can be specialized dendritic endings of afferent nerve fibers, and they are often associated with nonneural cells that surround them forming a sense organ. Touch and pressure are sensed by four types of mechanoreceptors (Figure 1). Meissner corpuscles are dendrites encapsulated in connective tissue and respond to changes in texture and slow vibrations. Merkel cells are expanded dendritic endings, and they respond to sustained pressure and touch. Ruffini corpuscles are enlarged dendritic endings with elongated capsules, and they respond to sustained pressure. Pacinian corpuscles consist of unmyelinated dendritic endings of a sensory nerve fiber, 2 μm in diameter, encapsulated by concentric lamellae of connective tissue that give the organ the appearance of a cocktail onion. These receptors respond to deep pressure and fast vibration. The sensory nerves from these mechanoreceptors are large myelinated Aα and Aβ fibers whose conduction velocities range from ~70–120 to ~40–75 m/s, respectively.

Fig1. Sensory systems encode four elementary attributes of stimuli: modality, location (receptive field), intensity, and duration (timing). A) The human hand has four types of mechanoreceptors; their combined activation produces the sensation of contact with an object. Selective activation of Merkel cells and Ruffini endings causes sensation of steady pressure; selective activation of Meissner and Pacinian corpuscles causes tingling and vibratory sensation. B) Location of a stimulus is encoded by spatial distribution of the population of receptors activated. A receptor fires only when the skin close to its sensory terminals is touched. These receptive fields of mechanoreceptors (shown as red areas on fingertips) differ in size and response to touch. Merkel cells and Meissner corpuscles provide the most precise localization as they have the smallest receptive fields and are most sensitive to pressure applied by a small probe. C) Stimulus intensity is signaled by firing rates of individual receptors; duration of stimulus is signaled by time course of firing. The spike trains indicate action potentials elicited by pressure from a small probe at the center of each receptive field. Meissner and Pacinian corpuscles adapt rapidly, the others adapt slowly. (Reproduced with permission from Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM [editors]: Principles of Neural Science, 4th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2000.)