Classification of muscle spindle afferents innervating the masseter muscle in rats

Taylor et al. [Taylor, A., Durbaba, R., Rodgers, J.F., 1992a. The classification of afferents from muscle spindles of the jaw-closing muscles of the cat. J Physiol 456, 609-628] developed a method to classify muscle spindle afferents using succinylcholine (Sch) and ramp and hold stretches. They demonstrated that cat jaw muscle spindle afferents show high proportion of intermediate responses to ramp and hold jaw stretch. Together with observations on the responses to Sch their data suggests that the majority of jaw muscle spindle afferents are influenced by a combination of nuclear bag(2) and nuclear chain fibres. Relatively few are influenced solely by nuclear bag(1) fibres. The purpose of this study was to categorize jaw muscle spindle afferent in rodents in response to ramp and hold stretches. Several measures were used to classify spindle afferents including (1) conduction velocity, (2) coefficient of variation (C.V.) of the interspike interval during jaw opening, and (3) the dynamic sensitivity and the initial discharge of spindle afferents before and after succinylcholine infusion (Sch, 100mg/kg, i.v.). Consistent with observations in the cat jaw muscles, the distribution of the conduction velocity and the C.V. of Vmes masseter afferents were unimodal. Therefore, these parameters were of little value in functional classification of spindle innervation. Succinylcholine injection either markedly increased the dynamic sensitivity or produced no change in Vmes afferents. Unlike cat jaw muscle spindle afferents, the effect of Sch on the initial discharge was not clearly separable from those responding or not responding to Sch. These results suggest that rat jaw muscle spindle afferents, have physiological properties that are primarily intermediate in nature and are likely to reflect a predominance of influence from nuclear bag(2) and chain fibres. However, the distinction between bag(2) and chain fibres influences is not as clearly defined in the rat compared to the cat.