Corneal reflex responses to mechanical and electrical stimuli in coma and narcotic analgesia in humans
1997; Elsevier BV; Volume: 222; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0304-3940(97)13335-3
ISSN1872-7972
AutoresG. Cruccu, M. G. Leardi, Stefano Ferracuti, M. Manfredi,
Tópico(s)Ocular Surface and Contact Lens
ResumoThe corneal reflex, a bilateral eye-blink, can be elicited in humans either by mechanical or electrical corneal stimulation. Both in comatose patients and in normal subjects injected with the opiate fentanyl, the electrically-evoked corneal reflex was more suppressed than the mechanically-evoked reflex. We propose that the mechanical input yields a reflex more resistant to depression of the corticoreticular drive and to narcotic analgesia, because it exploits temporal summation at central synapses, whereas the electrical input exploits spatial summation.
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