Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Historically, the creation of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system of the vertebrates is inextricably linked to the unification of the cranial and sacral autonomic outflows. There is an intriguing disproportion between the entrenchment of the notion of a ‘cranio-sacral’ pathway, which informs every textbook schematic of the autonomic nervous system since the early XX th century, and the wobbliness of its two roots: an anatomical detail overinterpreted by Walter Holbrook Gaskell (the ‘gap’ between the lumbar and sacral outflows), on which John Newport Langley grafted a piece of physiology (a supposed antagonism of these two outflows on external genitals), repeatedly questioned since, to little avail. I retrace the birth of a flawed scientific concept (the cranio-sacral outflow) and the way in which it ossified instead of dissipated. Then, I suggest that the critique of the ‘cranio-sacral outflow’ invites, in turn, a radical deconstruction of the very notion of a ‘parasympathetic’ outflow, and a more realistic description of the autonomic nervous system.
Source: eLife
DOI: 10.7554/elife.104826
Author: Jean-François Brunet
Language: English
Subfield: Neurology
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,500
OpenAlex ID: W4408422254