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Detection of innocuous temperatures allows an organism to select an appropriate environmental climate, while the ability to recognize noxious temperature extremes warns of impending tissue damage. For temperat...
Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) is a well-known inflammatory mediator that enhances the excitability of DRG neurons. Homomeric P2X3 and heteromeric P2X2/3 receptors are abundantly expressed in dorsal root ganglia (DRG...
Clinical and experimental studies of neuropathic pain support the hypothesis that a functional coupling between postganglionic sympathetic efferent and sensory afferent fibers contributes to the pain. We inves...
Because excessive reduction in activities after back injury may impair recovery, it is important to understand and address the factors contributing to the variability in motor responses to pain. The current do...
In general, opioids that induce the recycling of μ-opioid receptors (MORs) promote little desensitization, although morphine is one exception to this rule. While morphine fails to provoke significant internali...
The phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (pERK) in DRG and dorsal horn neurons is induced by the C-fiber electrical stimulation to the peripheral nerve. The present study was designed to in...
The Na+, K+, 2Cl- type I cotransporter (NKCC1) and TRPV1 receptors, at the level of the dorsal horn, have been implicated in mediating allodynia in response to an inflammatory insult. The NKCC1 cotransporter regu...
It is well known that antidepressants increase neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. The increase of neurogenesis might contribute to the behavioral effects of antidepressants. However, the mec...
Active regulation of gene expression in the nervous system plays an important role in the development and/or maintenance of inflammatory pain. MicroRNA (miRNA) negatively regulates gene expression via posttran...
Among different forms of persistent pain, neuropathic pain presents as a most difficult task for basic researchers and clinicians. Despite recent rapid development of neuroscience and modern techniques related...
Corticotropin-releasing factor receptor CRF1 has been implicated in the neurobiological mechanisms of anxiety and depression. The amygdala plays an important role in affective states and disorders such as anxi...
Small neurons of the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) express five of the nine known voltage-gated sodium channels. Each channel has unique biophysical characteristics which determine how it contributes to the gener...
NMDA receptors (NMDARs) are involved in excitatory synaptic transmission and plasticity associated with a variety of brain functions, from memory formation to chronic pain. Subunit-selective antagonists for NM...
Hypoxia and ischemia occur in the spinal cord when blood vessels of the spinal cord are compressed under pathological conditions such as spinal stenosis, tumors, and traumatic spinal injury. Here by using spin...
Long-term potentiation (LTP) at synapses of nociceptive nerve fibres is a proposed cellular mechanism underlying some forms of hyperalgesia. In this review fundamental properties of LTP in nociceptive pathways...
The assessment of pain is of critical importance for mechanistic studies as well as for the validation of drug targets. This review will focus on knee joint pain associated with arthritis. Different animal mod...
Previous studies have demonstrated that prolonged morphine treatment in vivo induces the translocation of delta opioid receptors (δORs) from intracellular compartments to neuronal plasma membranes and this traffi...
To assess the effect of variations in GTP cyclohydrolase gene (GCH1) on pain sensitivity in humans.
While altered activities in sensory neurons were noticed in neuropathic pain, caused by highly diverse insults to the peripheral nervous system, such as diabetes, alcohol ingestion, cancer chemotherapy and dru...
There is a population of large neurons with cell bodies in laminae III and IV of the spinal dorsal horn which express the neurokinin 1 receptor (NK1r) and have dendrites that enter the superficial laminae. Alt...
The disabling chronic pain syndrome erythromelalgia (also termed erythermalgia) is characterized by attacks of burning pain in the extremities induced by warmth. Pharmacological treatment is often ineffective,...
Since its launch at the beginning of 2005, Molecular Pain has published pain research articles that cover broad areas including: genetics, molecular and cellular biology, synaptic and neuronal mechanisms, novel a...
The molecular identity and pharmacological properties of mechanically gated ion channels in sensory neurons are poorly understood. We show that FM1-43, a styryl dye used to fluorescently label cell membranes, ...
Understanding basic neuronal mechanisms hold the hope for future treatment of brain disease. The 1st international conference on synapse, memory, drug addiction and pain was held in beautiful downtown Toronto,...
A hallmark of many orofacial pain disorders is cold sensitivity, but relative to heat-related pain, mechanisms of cold perception and the development of cold allodynia are not clearly understood. Molecular med...
Phasic and tonic inhibitions are two types of inhibitory activities involved in inhibitory processing in the CNS. In the spinal cord dorsal horn, phasic inhibition is mediated by both GABAergic and glycinergic...
Prokineticins (PKs), consisting of PK1 and PK2, are a pair of newly identified regulatory peptides. Two closely related G-protein coupled receptors, PKR1 and PKR2, mediate the signaling of PKs. PKs/PKRs partic...
Two major approaches have been employed for the development of novel drugs to treat chronic pain. The most traditional approach identifies molecules involved in pain as potential therapeutic targets and has fo...
Changes in sodium channel activity and neuronal hyperexcitability contribute to neuropathic pain, a major clinical problem. There is strong evidence that the re-expression of the embryonic voltage-gated sodium...
Reduction of the transmembrane chloride gradient in spinal lamina I neurons contributes to the cellular hyperexcitability producing allodynia and hyperalgesia after peripheral nerve injury. The resultant decre...
The synaptic and cellular mechanisms of pain-related central sensitization in the spinal cord are not fully understood yet. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) has been identified as an important molecule i...
This review summarizes functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings that have informed our current understanding of pain, analgesia and related phenomena, and discusses the potential role of fMRI in i...
GluR5-containing kainate receptors (KARs) are known to be involved in nociceptive transmission. Our previous work has shown that the activation of presynaptic KARs regulates GABAergic and glycinergic synaptic ...
Sensory mechanical transduction – necessary for hearing, proprioception, and the senses of touch and pain – remains poorly understood. In somatosensation, even the basic properties of the mechanically sensitiv...
Peripheral nerve injury is known to up-regulate the expression of rapidly-repriming Nav1.3 sodium channel within first-order dorsal root ganglion neurons and second-order dorsal horn nociceptive neurons, but i...
Prostaglandins (PGs) are requisite components of inflammatory pain as indicated by the efficacy of cyclooxygenase 1/2 (COX1/2) inhibitors. PGs do not activate nociceptive ion channels directly, but sensitize t...
Among various machineries occurring in the experimental neuropathic pain model, there exists the loss of pain transmission through C-fiber neurons as well as the hypersensitivity through A-fibers. The current ...
Candidate gene studies on the basis of biological hypotheses have been a practical approach to identify relevant genetic variation in complex traits. Based on previous reports and the roles in pain pathways, w...
Protein kinases and phosphatases catalyze opposing reactions of phosphorylation and dephosphorylation, which may modulate the function of crucial signaling proteins in central nervous system. This is an import...
The vanilloid receptor 1 (TRPV1) is critical in the development of inflammatory hyperalgesia. Several receptors including G-protein coupled prostaglandin receptors have been reported to functionally interact w...
Activity-dependent synaptic plasticity is known to be important in learning and memory, persistent pain and drug addiction. Glutamate NMDA receptor activation stimulates several protein kinases, which then tri...
L-acetylcarnitine (LAC), a drug utilized for the treatment of neuropathic pain in humans, has been shown to induce analgesia in rodents by up-regulating the expression of metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (mGl...
Extracellular ATP is known to mediate synaptic transmission as a neurotransmitter or a neuromodulator via ionotropic P2X and metabotropic P2Y receptors. Several lines of evidence have suggested that ATP facili...
The latero-capsular part of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeLC) is the target of the spino-parabrachio-amygdaloid pain pathway. Our previous studies showed that CeLC neurons develop synaptic plasticity ...
The complex neuronal circuitry of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord is as yet poorly understood. However, defining the circuits underlying the transmission of information from primary afferents to higher leve...
In the present study, we first report an in vivo characterization of flexor responses induced by three distinct sine-wave stimuli in the electrical stimulation-induced paw flexion (EPF) test in mice. The fixed si...
Cyclic AMP-responsive element binding protein (CREB) activity is known to contribute to important neuronal functions, such as synaptic plasticity, learning and memory. Using a microelectroporation technique to...
Pain patients are often depressed and anxious, and benefit less from psychotropic drugs than pain-free patients. We hypothesize that this partial resistance is due to the unique neurochemical contribution to m...
Protein kinase C (PKC) in the spinal cord appears to mediate chronic injury-induced pain, but not acute nociceptive pain. Muscle insult results in increased release of glutamate spinally, and hyperalgesia that...
Hypoxia alters neuronal function and can lead to neuronal injury or death especially in the central nervous system. But little is known about the effects of hypoxia in neurones of the peripheral nervous system...