Loughborough University
Browse
2017_TNZ_JNeuro.pdf (2.62 MB)

Characteristics of the local cutaneous sensory thermoneutral zone

Download (2.62 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-17, 09:30 authored by Davide Filingeri, Hui Zhang, Edward A. Arens
Skin temperature detection thresholds have been used to measure human cold and warm sensitivity across the temperature continuum. They exhibit a sensory zone within which neither warm nor cold sensations prevail. This zone has been widely assumed to coincide with steady state local skin temperatures between 32-34ᵒC, but its underlying neurophysiology has been rarely investigated. Here we employ two approaches to characterize the properties of sensory thermo-neutrality, testing for each whether neutrality shifts along the temperature continuum depending on adaptation to a preceding thermal state. The focus is on local spots of skin on the palm. Ten participants (30.3±4.8 y) underwent two experiments. Experiment 1 established the cold-to-warm inter-detection-threshold range for the palm’s glabrous skin, and its shift as a function of 3 starting skin temperatures (26, 31 or 36ᵒC). For the same conditions, Experiment 2 determined a thermally neutral zone centered around a thermally neutral point in which thermoreceptors’ activity is balanced. The zone was found to be narrow (~0.98 to ~1.33ᵒC) moving with the starting skin temperature over the temperature span 27.5-34.9ᵒC (Pearson r=33 0.94; p<0.001). It falls within the cold-to-warm inter-threshold range (width: ~2.25 to ~2.47ᵒC) but is only half as wide. These findings provide the first quantitative analysis of the local sensory thermo-neutral zone in humans, indicating that it does not occur only within a specific range of steady-state skin temperatures (i.e. it shifts across the temperature continuum) and that it differs from the inter-detection-threshold range both quantitatively and qualitatively. These findings provide insight into thermoreception neurophysiology.

Funding

This work was supported by the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency25 Energy, DOE) DELTA (Delivering Efficient Local Thermal Amenities) program under contract DE-AR0000529.

History

School

  • Design and Creative Arts

Department

  • Design

Published in

Journal of Neurophysiology

Volume

117

Issue

4

Pages

1797 - 1806

Citation

FILINGERI, D., ZHANG, H. and ARENS, E., 2017. Characteristics of the local cutaneous sensory thermoneutral zone. Journal of Neurophysiology, 117 (4), pp. 1797-1806.

Publisher

© American Physiological Society.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-02-01

Publication date

2017-04-07

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Neurophysiology and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00845.2016

ISSN

0022-3077

eISSN

1522-1598

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC