Quantitative studies on nerve regeneration in Amphibia. I. Factors controlling nerve regeneration in adult limbs

✍ Scribed by Raymond Litwiller

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1938
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 974 KB
• Volume: 69
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9967
• DOI: 10.1002/cne.900690306

✦ Synopsis

Regeneration of nerves after transection is the result of a process of growth beginning from the cut ends of the proximal stumps left in connection with their cell bodies. Extensive bifurcation of the sprouts provides for an adequate supply of peripheral terminations. The mechanisms at play, however, are not understood.

Weiss ('31) reported a study of the innervation of two supernumerary fore limbs of an adult frog. He found that the number of nerve fibers connected with the normal and the two near-by supernumerary limbs was about three times as large distally as proximally. These results would indicate that an adjustment of the nerve number to satisfy an increased peripheral load can be accomplished by repeated peripheral division of axons. This for the first time suggests that the non-nervous periphery may affect the intensity of peripheral branching of outgrowing fibers in such a way as to produce a constant ratio between the size of the innervated periphery and the number of terminal nerve branches. Again,