Regulation of sensory nerve conduction velocity (SCV) of human bodies responding to annual temperature variations in natural environments

The extensive research interests in environmental temperature can be linked to human productivity/performance as well as comfort and health; while the mechanisms of physiological indices responding to temperature variations remain incompletely understood. This study adopted a physiological sensory nerve conduction velocity (SCV) as a temperature-sensitive biomarker to explore the thermoregulatory mechanisms of human responding to annual temperatures. The measurements of subjects’ SCV (over 600 samples) were conducted in a naturally ventilated environment over all four seasons. The results showed a positive correlation between SCV and annual temperatures and a Boltzmann model was adopted to depict the S-shaped trend of SCV with operative temperatures from 5 °C to 40 °C. The SCV increased linearly with operative temperatures from 14.28 °C to 20.5 °C and responded sensitively for 10.19 °C - 24.59 °C, while tended to be stable beyond that. The subjects’ thermal sensations were linearly related to SCV, elaborating the relation between human physiological regulations and subjective thermal perception variations. The findings reveal the body SCV regulatory characteristics in different operative temperature intervals, thereby giving a deeper insight into human autonomic thermoregulation and benefiting for built environment designs, meantime minimizing the temperature-invoked risks to human health and well-being

Valores normais das velocidades de condução nervosa em um grupo de 101 pessoas

Foram estudadas as medidas de condução nervosa em 101 pessoas normais, 53 do sexo masculino e 48 do feminino. A idade variou de 16 a 81 anos (média, 44 anos). Foram estudadas tanto a velocidade de condução sensitiva quanto a velocidade de condução motora nos nervos mais frequentemente avaliados em neurofisiologia clínica. Em relação ao fator idade, observou-se declínio significativo nas faixas etárias mais avançadas