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Science 5 April 1968:
Vol. 160. no. 3823, pp. 96 - 98
DOI: 10.1126/science.160.3823.96
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Articles

Terminals of Single Ia Fibers: Distribution within a Pool of 300 Homonymous Motor Neurons

Lorne M. Mendell 1 and Elwood Henneman 1

1 Department of Physiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

The excitatory postsynaptic potentials produced in motoneurons by impulses in single afferent fibers (Ia) have been recorded with the aid of an averaging computer. These responses were used to map the distribution of the terminals of single fibers within the pool of 300 motoneurons of the medial gastrocnemius muscle. Twelve Ia fibers were studied in separate experiments. Monosynaptic excitatory postsynaptic potentials were found in 94 percent of the 77 motoneurons investigated. This finding indicates that each of the 300 motoneurons must receive afferent fibers from almost all of the spindles of the muscle it innervates.


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