TY - JOUR T1 - Spinal signaling of C-fiber mediated pleasant touch in humans JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/780635 SP - 780635 AU - Andrew G. Marshall AU - Manohar L Sharma AU - Kate Marley AU - Hakan Olausson AU - Francis P. McGlone Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/30/780635.abstract N2 - C-tactile afferents form a distinct channel that encodes pleasant tactile stimulation. Prevailing views indicate they project, as with other unmyelinated afferents, in lamina I-spinothalamic pathways. However, we found that spinothalamic ablation in humans, whilst profoundly impairing pain, temperature and itch, had no effect on pleasant touch perception. Only discriminative touch deficits were seen. These findings preclude privileged C-tactile-lamina I-spinothalamic projections and imply integrated hedonic and discriminative spinal processing from the body. ER -