Adaptation of the discharge of frog muscle spindles following a stretch

Abstract

1. Stretching a frog muscle spindle evoked a discharge of action potentials in its sensory axon. As the rate of this discharge decreased during the adaptation that followed the dynamic phase of a stretch, the variability of the interspike intervals of the impulse train increased.2. Adaptation occurred in two phases. At first the impulse train was almost regular and adapted rapidly, but later this gave way to a phase of slower adaptation where the variability of the discharge was much increased. In the second phase of adaptation the interspike intervals increased in length less than half as quickly as in the first phase.3. When the rate of adaptation changed from the more rapid to the slower phase there was often an abrupt change in the character of the discharge and the relationship between the mean interspike interval and the variability changed. The interspike interval at which this change-over occurred was relatively constant in records of the discharge from one afferent fibre even though stretches of different amplitude were employed, though it differed from one afferent fibre to another.4. These features of the discharge during adaptation suggest that the two sections of the impulse trains were derived from different spike generators by a process of probabilistic mixing.