Abstract
In recent years the normal and artificially inflamed knee joint of the cat has become an important model for neurophysiological studies on arthritic pain. The noxious stimuli causing pain are presumably perceived via “free nerve endings”, i.e., non-corpuscular endings of thinly myelinated fine afferent nerve fibers (group III or A ∂-fibers) and of non-myelinated fine afferent group IV or C-fibers (Schaible and Schmidt, 1983a, b, 1985; Grigg et al., 1986). But in comparison with neurophysiological knowledge, little is known about the morphological characteristics of articular “free nerve endings”. This is why we have studied the ultrastructure of “free nerve endings” and fine afferent nerve fibers in the normal knee joint capsule of the cat by serial sectioning and with three-dimensional reconstruction of nerve fibers for up to 300 µm length.
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© 1990 Plenum Press, New York
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Heppelmann, B., Meßlinger, K., Neiss, W.F., Schmidt, R.F. (1990). The Sensory Terminal Tree of “Free Nerve Endings” in the Articular Capsule of the Knee. In: Zenker, W., Neuhuber, W.L. (eds) The Primary Afferent Neuron. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0579-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0579-8_7
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