抄録
Transfer characteristics of mechanoreceptors in the frog's sartorius muscle to stretching were analyzed as multi-channel transducers working in the peripheral nervous system with the following methods.
(1) Two pairs of metal bipolar electrodes (Pt and Ag-AgCl) were used for recording afferent impulse trains of two separate channels having different amplitudes.
(2) A computer system (OKITAC-4300C) with a high-speed A/D converter and a disk memory (2.5 MW) was used to analyze waveforms of nerve impulses and to calculate characterizing parameters of the waveforms.
(3) These parameters were the absolute values in the rising and the falling phases of impulse waveforms, respectively, and the time intervals thereof.
(4) The two-dimensional amplitude histograms with these parameters were reconstructed in order to separate several receptor units having similar impulse waveforms from a series of nerve impulse discharges. The main clue to the reconstruction is the synchronization of impulses in both series of impulse trains.
The experimental results revealed that the mechanoreceptor systems were composed of several different receptor units of different transfer gains (impulse frequency/displacement) and of different activation thresholds for mechanical stretches.
