Spinal signaling of C-fiber mediated pleasant touch in humans

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Cite this article as: eLife 2019;8:e51642 doi: 10.7554/eLife.51642

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Abstract

C-tactile afferents form a distinct channel that encodes pleasant tactile stimulation. Prevailing views indicate they project, as with other unmyelinated afferents, in lamina I-spinothalamic pathways. However, we found that spinothalamic ablation in humans, whilst profoundly impairing pain, temperature and itch, had no effect on pleasant touch perception. Only discriminative touch deficits were seen. These findings preclude privileged C-tactile-lamina I-spinothalamic projections and imply integrated hedonic and discriminative spinal processing from the body.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are either included in the manuscript and supporting files or Open Science Framework - accession code g8vyk

The following data sets were generated

1. Marshall AG
(2019) Marshall_September_2019_Cordotomy_Database_Psychophysics
Open Science Framework, g8vyk.

https://osf.io/g8vyk/

Article and author information

Author details

Andrew G Marshall

Institute of Aging and Chronic Disease, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

For correspondence
andrew.marshall@liverpool.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8273-7089
Manohar L Sharma

Department of Pain Medicine, Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Kate Marley

Specialist Palliative Care Team, University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Hakan Olausson

Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Francis P McGlone

School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Pain Relief Foundation

Andrew G Marshall

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Ethical approval was obtained through the Health Research Authority National Research Ethics Service (Preston NRES committee, study reference 14/NW/1247). The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was taken from all study participants.

Reviewing Editor

Peggy Mason, University of Chicago, United States

Publication history

Received: September 5, 2019
Accepted: December 23, 2019
Accepted Manuscript published: December 24, 2019 (version 1)
Version of Record published: January 16, 2020 (version 2)

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.