ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2012
Rodents rely on Merkel cells for texture discrimination tasks.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 96 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diminished Signal-to-Noise Ratio Disrupts Somatosensory Population Encoding and Drives Tactile Hyposensitivity in the Fmr1Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Affective tactile comfort: is a specialized sensory system involved?Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Development and regeneration of Merkel cells.Current topics in developmental biology · 2025Review
- Open Field Two-Texture Preference Testing Is Not Associated With the Neuropathic Pain-Like Phenotype That Occurs Following Mouse Cervical Contusion Spinal Cord Injury.Neuroscience insights · 2025Article
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- Glia in Invertebrate Models: Insights from Caenorhabditis elegans.Advances in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Shank2 identifies a subset of glycinergic neurons involved in altered nociception in an autism model.Molecular autism · 2023Article
- SOX2-Sensing: Insights into the Role of SOX2 in the Generation of Sensory Cell Types in Vertebrates.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
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- Reducing Merkel cell activity in the whisker follicle disrupts cortical encoding of whisker movement amplitude and velocity.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2022Article
- Review
- The structure of sensory afferent compartments in health and disease.Journal of anatomy · 2022Review
- Tactile sensitivity in the rat: a correlation between receptor structure and function.Experimental brain research · 2021Article
- Sex-Dependent Reduction in Mechanical Allodynia in the Sural-Sparing Nerve Injury Model in Mice Lacking Merkel Cells.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Meissner corpuscles and their spatially intermingled afferents underlie gentle touch perception.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Dissection of Merkel cell formation in hairy and glabrous skin reveals a common requirement for FGFR2-mediated signalling.Experimental dermatology · 2019Article
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- Review
- FGF signalling controls the specification of hair placode-derived SOX9 positive progenitors to Merkel cells.Nature communications · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The cutaneous somatosensory system contains multiple types of mechanoreceptors that detect different mechanical stimuli (Johnson, 2001). These stimuli, either alone or in combination, are ultimately interpreted by the brain as different aspects of the sense of touch. Psychophysical and electrophysiological experiments in humans and other mammals implicate one of these mechanoreceptors, the Merkel cell/neurite complex, in two-point discrimination and the detection of curvature, shape, and texture (Johnson and Lamb, 1981; Johnson et al., 2000; Johnson, 2001). However, whether Merkel cell/neurite complex function is required for the detection of these stimuli is unknown. We genetically engineered mice that lack Merkel cells (Maricich et al., 2009; Morrison et al., 2009) to directly test the hypothesis that Merkel cell/neurite complexes are necessary to perform these types of sensory discrimination tasks. We found that mice devoid of Merkel cells could not detect textured surfaces with their feet while other measures of motor and sensory function were unaffected. Interestingly, these mice retained the ability to discriminate both texture and shape using their whiskers, suggesting that other somatosensory afferents can functionally substitute for Merkel cell/neurite complexes in this sensory organ. These findings suggest that Merkel cell/neurite complexes are essential for texture discrimination tasks involving glabrous skin but not whiskers.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.