Dear Kevin,
> Certainly Sato' s work in 1977 showed how a cats lumbar soft tissue, under
> GA can be mechanically stimulated to produce visceral responses; ie empty
> the urinary bladder. Gillette 1993 also showed the reverse where a rats
> uterous was inflammed with a dye which showed in trophic changes to the skin
> of the spine.
There is one nice reference in which you can find a wealth of research (more
than 300 pages) on different reflexes:
Sato, A., Sato, Y., Schmidt, R.F., The impact of somatosensory input on
autonomic functions, Rev. Physiol. Biochem. Pharmacol.,130, Springer Verlag,
Berlin, 1997
> I am therefore convinced of the odd autonomic referral patterns the viscera
> can give and realise our knowledge in this area is sketchy. It makes the
> orthopaedic dermatome/myotome explanation look like a 13th century map of
> the universe.
I found something very interesting in a book (Medical Acupuncture by J.
Filshie and A. White, Churchill Livingstone 1998, ISBN 0443049769). In the
chapter on segmental acupuncture they discussed what they called secondary
segmental relations.
These secondary segmental relations arise due to the anatomy and physiology
of the lateral horn, which is responsible for sympathetic innervation. The
lateral horn is divided in three parts and the part called the lateral
column has some very interesting features.
The lateral column has the following connections, where effects on one
segment affects the other and that goes both ways.
CNS ANS (L)
C8-T2 C1-C2
T2-T4 C3-C4
T5-T6 C5-C6
T7-T9 C7-C8
T10-T11 L3-L4
T12-L2 L5-S2
This may be a part of the explanation to why one often sees distal effects
of mobilisations of the spine.
All the best,
David
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