By Alex S. Reznik, Catherine Cao, Yuri L. Bunimovich
Keywords
Neuroglia, Nociceptive Schwann cells, Sensory nerves, Skin innervation
The Sensory Landscape of the Skin
Neurons were once considered solely responsible for the initiation and modulation of cutaneous sensation. Over the past 2 decades, accumulating evidence has challenged this neuron-centric dogma because non-neuronal skin cells have been identified as capable of interacting with afferents and transducing sensory stimuli. A series of landmark optogenetic studies have confirmed that non-neuronal skin cells such as epidermal Merkel cells (Maksimovic et al, 2014) and keratinocytes (Baumbauer et al, 2015; Stucky and Mikesell, 2021) can directly initiate mechanical and pain signaling in skin afferents, respectively. More recently, another specialized cell type has been described in the skin, termed nociceptive Schwann cell (nSC), further highlighting the complexity of the cellular network responsible for transducing sensory stimuli (Abdo et al, 2019).
