Nociceptor
- Date
- 1906 · confidence medium
- Place
- University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Charles Scott Sherrington
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Sherrington experimentally showed that different kinds of stimulus activate different afferent nerve fibres, and that intense or damaging stimuli activate a specific type -which he called a nociceptor- that triggers withdrawal reflexes, autonomic responses and the sensation of pain, refuting the idea that the organism was a simple mechanical transducer of stimuli into responses.
Sherrington developed much of this work while he was professor of physiology at Liverpool (1895-1913), before moving to Oxford; he published his synthesis in 'The Integrative Action of the Nervous System' (1906).
What it led to
- The founding of nociception as its own field of study
- A basis for modern research on pain and its treatment