| Abstract: | Interaction between responses to acoustic clicks and to electrodermal stimulation of the contralateral forelimb was investigated in 78 neurons in the magnocellular part of the medial geniculate body of curarized cats. Of this number, 33 neurons responded by discharges both to clicks and to electrodermal stimulation, 25 responded to clicks only, and 20 to electrodermal stimulation only, or to stimulation of the dorsal funiculus of the spinal cord. Conditioning stimulation evoked inhibition of the response to the testing stimulus in 32 of 33 neurons responding by spike discharges to both clicks and electrodermal stimulation. Electrodermal stimulation inhibited responses to clicks in all the neurons tested which responded only to clicks, whereas clicks evoked inhibition of responses to electrodermal stimulation (or to stimulation of the dorsal funiculus) in only four of the 20 neurons which responded to these types of stimulation only. It is suggested that inhibition of excitability arising in neurons of the magnocellular part of the medial geniculate body during interaction between auditory and somatosensory afferent volleys is based on postsynaptic inhibition.A. A. Bogomolets Institute of Physiology, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 368–374, July–August, 1980. |
