Meissner Corpuscles and Their Spatially Intermingled Afferents Underlie Gentle Touch Perception

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2020 Jun 20

PMID 32554568

Citations 59

Authors

Nicole L Neubarth

Alan J Emanuel

Yin Liu

Mark W Springel

Annie Handler

Qiyu Zhang

Brendan P Lehnert

Chong Guo

Lauren L Orefice

Amira Abdelaziz

Michelle M Delisle

Michael Iskols

Julia Rhyins

Soo J Kim

Stuart J Cattel

Wade Regehr

Christopher D Harvey

Jan Drugowitsch

David D Ginty

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Meissner corpuscles are mechanosensory end organs that densely occupy mammalian glabrous skin. We generated mice that selectively lacked Meissner corpuscles and found them to be deficient in both perceiving the gentlest detectable forces acting on glabrous skin and fine sensorimotor control. We found that Meissner corpuscles are innervated by two mechanoreceptor subtypes that exhibit distinct responses to tactile stimuli. The anatomical receptive fields of these two mechanoreceptor subtypes homotypically tile glabrous skin in a manner that is offset with respect to one another. Electron microscopic analysis of the two Meissner afferents within the corpuscle supports a model in which the extent of lamellar cell wrappings of mechanoreceptor endings determines their force sensitivity thresholds and kinetic properties.

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