Messengers of Fire and Ice

Marta Alves Simões, University of Sheffield. CC BY

Bundles of dorsal root ganglion cells — seen here in a mouse — live near the peripheral nervous system outside our spines, where they relay messages telling us how the torso is doing. If the room is too cold, maybe we need to put on a sweater. If we’re touching a hot stove, we need to get our hand away ASAP.

In their quest to figure out what form the information takes neuroscientists have identified many different types of dorsal root ganglion cells. Some respond mainly to temperature while others respond to pressure, but at least half correspond to more than one type of feeling.

Recently, researchers have learned that the cells record different sensations in different ways. The hotter it gets, for instance, the more heat cells fire. As it gets colder, however, the overall number of cold cells firing stays about the same. Rather, the cold information seems to lie in which cold cells fire, rather than how many.

About the Author

Charlie Wood

Charlie Wood is a science writer with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Brown University and a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In previous lives he taught physics in Mozambique and English in Japan, but these days he freelances from his home in New York.