Identification of Spinal Circuits Transmitting and Gating Mechanical Pain

Overview

Journal Cell

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Cell Biology

Date 2014 Dec 4

PMID 25467445

Citations 295

Authors

Bo Duan

Longzhen Cheng

Steeve Bourane

Olivier Britz

Christopher Padilla

Lidia Garcia-Campmany

Michael Krashes

Wendy Knowlton

Tomoko Velasquez

Xiangyu Ren

Sarah Ross

Bradford B Lowell

Yun Wang

Martyn Goulding

Qiufu Ma

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Pain information processing in the spinal cord has been postulated to rely on nociceptive transmission (T) neurons receiving inputs from nociceptors and Aβ mechanoreceptors, with Aβ inputs gated through feed-forward activation of spinal inhibitory neurons (INs). Here, we used intersectional genetic manipulations to identify these critical components of pain transduction. Marking and ablating six populations of spinal excitatory and inhibitory neurons, coupled with behavioral and electrophysiological analysis, showed that excitatory neurons expressing somatostatin (SOM) include T-type cells, whose ablation causes loss of mechanical pain. Inhibitory neurons marked by the expression of dynorphin (Dyn) represent INs, which are necessary to gate Aβ fibers from activating SOM(+) neurons to evoke pain. Therefore, peripheral mechanical nociceptors and Aβ mechanoreceptors, together with spinal SOM(+) excitatory and Dyn(+) inhibitory neurons, form a microcircuit that transmits and gates mechanical pain. PAPERCLIP:

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