The dorsal root ganglia contain neurons with cell bodies located outside the spinal cord, sending one axon to the skin, muscles, or organs, and another axon to the brainstem.

“So all up and down your spinal cord on either side are these little blobs of neurons, little collections of neurons. They have a name if you'd like to know for you aficionado or those who are curious, they're called DRGs dorsal root ganglia. A ganglion is just a collection or clump of cells. And those DRGs are really interesting because they send one branch that we call an axon, a little wire out to our skin, also to our muscles into our organs, but here we're talking about the skin. They send a wire out to our skin and that wire literally reaches up into the skin. It's actually in our skin and they have another wire from that same cell body that goes in the opposite direction, which is up to our brain and creates connections within our brain in the so-called brainstem.”