Q. Does damage of sensory nerves (such as due to spinal deformity) affect sympathetic or parasympathetic output? If so, in what way does this occur?
Doctor Answer is medically reviewed by SecondMedic medical review team.
The short answer is yes, damage to sensory nerves can lead to changes in sympathetic and parasympathetic output.
When it comes to the specifics of how this occurs, there are a few different mechanisms at play. First off, when it comes to somatic sensory input – which pertains to information about touch, pressure and pain from cutaneous (skin) receptors – damage can cause an inability for certain stimuli from these receptors be transmitted along afferent nerve fibers back towards the central nervous system. This would then prevent appropriate stimulation of the sympathetic or parasympathetic response depending on what type of stimulus was interrupted by the damaged nerve(s).
Secondarily, spinal deformity or trauma may also decrease proprioceptive input (the sense of knowing where your body is in space relative to other objects) which can directly effect how the central nervous system responds both sympathetically and parasympathetically as well. When altered inputs are being sent up through spinal pathways due to injury or malformation, reflex arcs governing autonomic response patterns could theoretically be affected too since they rely on sensory inputs at some level just like somatic ones do. In addition spinal cord transection could also lead directly too an alteration in autonomic output by damaging neural pathways typically used for this purpose further downstream from initial afferent reception.
Lastly nerve entrapment syndromes such as carpal tunnel syndrome have been linked with increased levels of sympathetic activity due to prior nerve damage caused by compressed structures interfering with proper signal conduction though peripheral motor pathways upstream from effectors supplying innate activation/inhibition orders elsewhere in the body related strictly too autonomic functions independent of conscious control centers found higher up within brainstem nuclei associated with these same physiological processes laterally speaking.
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