ANTH 438 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Peripheral Nervous System, Cerebral Cortex, World War I
21 Feb 2016
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Anth 438: the wwi period: describe the experiments conducted by rivers in collaboration with henry head on the so-called epicritic and protopathic nerve networks. Rivers conducted a famous nerve regeneration experiment in 1903, in collaboration with henry head. The experiment involved a surgery performed on head"s left forearm in which two nerves (the radial and external cutaneous nerves) were severed and then sutured back together. Over the next four years, the men carefully charted the return of cutaneous sensitivity to the skin. Rivers and head describe the regeneration process as passing through two neural stages. Protopathic sensitivity consisted of the primitive: the incapability of making fine distinctions with regards to the precise site, intensity, or quality of stimuli. Once the quantity of stimulus exceeded the protopathic threshold, head"s sense of feeling had a nonlocalizable and all-or-nothing quality . Over time, the overlaying epicritic nerves could sense these differences - head acquired the ability to localize and discriminate his sensations.
