General visceral afferent

General visceral afferent fibers
Scheme showing pathways of a typical spinal nerve. 1. Somatic efferent. 2. Somatic afferent. 3,4,5. Sympathetic efferent. 6,7. Sympathetic afferent. Note that this image merely depicts pathways in a schematic fashion – it is not anatomically correct. The efferent sympathetics exit in a loop – entering the more lateral white and either exiting the more medial grey or traveling up/down the chain to exit grey at other ganglia.
Anatomical terminology []

The general visceral afferent fibers (GVA) conduct sensory impulses (usually pain or reflex sensations) from the viscera, glands, and blood vessels to the central nervous system. They are considered to be part of the autonomic nervous system. However, unlike the efferent fibers of the autonomic nervous system, the afferent fibers are not classified as either sympathetic or parasympathetic.

GVA create referred pain by activating general somatic afferent fibers where the two meet in the posterior horn of the spinal cord (dorsal horn).

The cranial nerves that contain GVA fibers include the facial nerve, the glossopharyngeal nerve and the vagus nerve.

This is something unique. In the abdomen, general visceral afferent fibers usually accompany sympathetic efferent fibers. This means that a signal traveling in an afferent fiber will begin at sensory receptors in the afferent fiber's target organ, travel up to the ganglion where the sympathetic efferent fiber synapses, continue back along a splanchnic nerve from the ganglion into the sympathetic trunk, move into a ventral ramus via a white ramus communicans, and finally move into the mixed spinal nerve between the division of the rami and the division of the roots of the spinal nerve. It gives fibers.The GVA pathway then diverges from the sympathetic efferent pathway, which follows the ventral root into the spinal column, by following the dorsal root into the dorsal root ganglion, where the cell body of the visceral afferent nerve is located. Finally, the signal continues along the dorsal root from the dorsal root ganglion to a region of gray matter in the dorsal horn of the spinal column where it is transmitted via a synapse to a neuron in the central nervous system.