Sensory Processing Archives

Parabrachial Calca neurons drive nociplasticity

Logan F. Condon et al.
Cell Reports | April 6, 2024
Pain that persists beyond the time required for tissue healing and pain that arises in the absence of tissue injury, collectively referred to as nociplastic pain, are poorly understood phenomena mediated by plasticity...

Somatosensory cortex and central amygdala regulate neuropathic pain-mediated peripheral immune response via vagal projections to the spleen

Xia Zhu et al.
Nature Neuroscience | January 30, 2024
Pain involves neuroimmune crosstalk, but the mechanisms of this remain unclear. Here we showed that the splenic T helper 2 (TH2) immune cell response is differentially regulated in male mice with acute versus chronic...

Anterior cingulate cortex regulates pain catastrophizing-like behaviors in rats

Hyun Jung Jee et al.
Molecular Brain | October 13, 2023
Negative pain expectation including pain catastrophizing is a well-known clinical phenomenon whereby patients amplify the aversive value of a painful or oftentimes even a similar, non-painful stimulus. Mechanisms of...

Long-term optical imaging of the spinal cord in awake, behaving animals

Biafra Ahanonu et al.
bioRxiv | May 24, 2023
Advances in optical imaging approaches and fluorescent biosensors have enabled an understanding of the spatiotemporal and long-term neural dynamics in the brain of awake animals. However, methodological difficulties and...

Disruption of hippocampal neuronal circuit function depends upon behavioral state in the APP/PS1 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Heng Zhou et al.
Scientific Reports | December 6, 2022
The Alzheimer’s disease-associated peptide amyloid-beta (Aβ) has been associated with neuronal hyperactivity under anesthesia, but clinical trials of anticonvulsants or neural system suppressors have, so far,...

Somatosensory cortical signature of facial nociception and vibrotactile touch–induced analgesia

Jinghao Lu et al.
Science Advances | November 16, 2022
Pain relief by vibrotactile touch is a common human experience. Previous neurophysiological investigations of its underlying mechanism in animals focused on spinal circuits, while human studies suggested the involvement...

Nigrostriatal dopamine pathway regulates auditory discrimination behavior

Allen P. F. Chen et al.
Nature Communications | October 8, 2022
The auditory striatum, the tail portion of dorsal striatum in basal ganglia, is implicated in perceptual decision-making, transforming auditory stimuli to action outcomes. Despite its known connections to diverse...

A central alarm system that gates multi-sensory innate threat cues to the amygdala

Sukjae J. Kang et al.
Cell Reports | August 16, 2022
Perception of threats is essential for survival. Previous findings suggest that parallel pathways independently relay innate threat signals from different sensory modalities to multiple brain areas, such as the midbrain...

Noise correlations in neural ensemble activity limit the accuracy of hippocampal spatial representations

Omer Hazon et al.
Nature Communications | July 25, 2022
Neurons in the CA1 area of the mouse hippocampus encode the position of the animal in an environment. However, given the variability in individual neurons responses, the accuracy of this code is still poorly understood....

Sound induces analgesia through corticothalamic circuits

Wenjie Zhou et al.
Science | July 7, 2022
Sound—including music and noise—can relieve pain in humans, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unknown. We discovered that analgesic effects of sound depended on a low (5-decibel) signal-to-noise ratio...

Simultaneous recording of breathing and neural activity in awake behaving mice

Shijia Liu et al.
STAR Protocols | June 17, 2022
This protocol provides a pipeline for simultaneous recording of breathing and neural activities in awake, behaving mice. Breathing is recorded with thermistor probes implanted in the nasal cavity, which can be easily...

Disrupted population coding in the prefrontal cortex underlies pain aversion

Anna Li et al.
Cell Reports | November 9, 2021
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) regulates a wide range of sensory experiences. Chronic pain is known to impair normal neural response, leading to enhanced aversion. However, it remains unknown how nociceptive responses in...

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Publication Category: Sensory Processing