The wide dynamic range (WDR) or "convergent" neuron is the most populous type of those neurons whose cell bodies are located in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. WDR neurons are responsive to all somatosensory modalities (thermal, chemical and mechanical) and a broad range of intensity of stimulation from peripheral nerves. They steadily increase their firing rate as the stimulus intensity rises into the noxious range. There are, for example, wide dynamic range neurons that respond to benign stroking as well as to painful heat and mechanical damage in the cell's receptive field. Dorsal horn neurons that receive input from the viscera via thin afferent fibers are all WDR type. The WDR neuron was identified by Mendell in 1966.
Famous quotes containing the words wide, dynamic and/or range:
“Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do what’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)