Do experimental lesions at various levels of the reflex arc alter the shape of the pupillary reflex to light in mammals?
This preclinical study aims to map the sympathetic and parasympathetic contributions to the pupillary light reflex to aid in the differential diagnosis of autonomic nervous system lesions.
IN NUMEROUS pupillographic experiments made for clinical purposes we found various shapes of the pupillary reflex to light in conditions which, from clinical evidence, were due to pathologic processes or lesions of different localizations. The shapes varied, whether the lesions were in the autonomous centers or the periphery, either sympathetic or parasympathetic. Therefore it is the purpose of these studies to determine, by means of experimental lesions at the various levels of the reflex arc in some mammals, the sympathetic and/or the parasympathetic factors which are furnished, at these levels, to the integration of the normal shape of the pupillary reflex to light, with the goal of providing a comparative localization basis for pupillography as a tool of differential diagnosis of clinical lesions of the autonomic nervous system. METHOD We used 24 cats, 12 monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and 25 rabbits. Of the cats, 7 were not operated on; 7 were
Otto Löwenstein (Fri,) studied this question.