Abstract
Vellus hairs in mammals including man are innervated by perifollicular nerve endings (see Chap. 6), while larger hairs such as guard hairs and sinus hairs, which are specialized for touch, have additional innervation to serve their special function. Guard hairs have a connective tissue sheath which extends from the level of the attachment of the sebaceous gland to the hair bulb, and capillaries are present between the connective tissue sheath and the follicular epithelium below the level of the sebaceous glands. The largest hairs are sinus hairs which are absent in man. A thick connective tissue capsule surrounds these hairs, enclosing a blood sinus around the hair follicle. The upper part of the blood sinus is called the ring sinus and there are no internal partitions in this part of the sinus. The lower part of the blood sinus is divided into small chambers and is called the cavernous sinus. In some smaller sinus hairs the cavernous sinus is not present. These have been defined as hemi-sinus hairs by Munger and Halata (1983). Both the capillaries of guard hairs and the blood sinus of sinus hairs form a protective cushion around the hair follicle against the surrounding dermis, to enable them to detect very fine mechanical stimuli to the hair shaft and follicular epithelium. Free nerve endings (FNEs) occur beneath the perifollicular nerve endings (PNEs) in all three types of hair. Merkel nerve endings (MNEs), as well as pilo-Ruffini nerve endings (RNEs) (Biemesderfer et al. 1978), are found in association with some vellus hairs, many guard hairs, and all sinus hairs. In sinus hairs in addition to FNEs, RNEs, PNEs, and MNEs, small lamellated corpuscles occur. They have been called paciniform corpuscles (Polacek 1966) or simple encapsulated corpuscles (Polacek and Halata 1970). The type of innervation seems to be dependent on the type of hair, as the larger hairs are better innervated both in numbers and variety of nerve terminals. As the perifollicular nerve endings have been described in this book by Hashimoto, we will address ourselves to detailed descriptions of the FNEs, RNEs, MNEs, and the lamellated corpuscles (LNEs).
Supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ha 1194/2-1).
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Halata, Z. (1990). Specific Nerve Endings in Vellus Hair, Guard Hair, and Sinus Hair. In: Orfanos, C.E., Happle, R. (eds) Hair and Hair Diseases. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74612-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74612-3_7
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