Lack of effect of partial spinal cord sections upon thermal discrimination in the monkey.

Monkeys, previously trained to discriminate between "warm" and "cool" stimuli to the skin, were used to test whether the interruption of certain pathways in the spinal cord causes permanet deficits in thermoesthesia. Lesions of the spinothalamic, spinocervical and dorsal funiculi pathways failed to interrupt temperature discrimination, as did also hemisection of the cord. It appears that there is a large safety factor for the conduction of the sensory afferent data singling skin temperature.