Stimulus-response relation of tooth pulp units in rat trigeminal nucleus.
Electrical stimulation of the rat tooth pulp evokes a slow mass potential (SMP) in the trigeminal spinal nucleus. Single units in the SMP field were examined for their stimulus-response relation. The response profile of most single units differed from that of background SMPs in that the former tended to give a greater gradient or exponent when they were approximated by linear or power function, respectively. Most of single units with a short and stable latency could be described rather well by power function, while a majority of units with a longer and unstable latency had a relatively wide dynamic range to varied stimulus intensities and could be approximated more closely by linear function.
D000818:Animals; D003782:Dental Pulp / Q000294:innervation*; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014098:Toothache / Q000503:physiopathology; D014278:Trigeminal Nuclei / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology