Pain System

Westlund, Karin N.; Willis, William D.

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-374236-0.10032-x

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 455 publications

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“…Nociceptive stimuli reaching the spinal cord via C or AѨ fibers formed by DRG cells are synaptically transmitted to dorsal horn neurons and relayed in multiple parallel pathways to multiple targets in the brain stem, diencephalon, and possibly even cortex (309). The logic behind these parallel information streams and their multiple targets remains incompletely understood, but may reflect the requirement to feed nociceptive information into different subsystems of the brain to orchestrate an overall homeostatic response.…”

Section: Sensory Inputs To the Thalamus And Cortical Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another layer of complexity is added to the spinothalamic system when considering axonal projections of individual dorsal horn neurons situated in different laminas. Superficial lamina I and also lamina V neurons tend to project to lateral and posterior thalamic areas, while deep lamina VI-VIII mainly project to the medial thalamus (309). Given that action potentials triggered in dorsal horn projection neurons by synaptic inputs from AѨ fibers will reach the thalamus within tens of milliseconds after peripheral stimulation and that C fibers-triggered signals will need hundreds of milliseconds (24), any processing of coincidence in regions receiving both types of input will be difficult to achieve.…”

Section: Sensory Inputs To the Thalamus And Cortical Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dorsal funiculus delivers epicritic information from DRG neurons via the gracile and cuneate nuclei and the medial lemniscus to the VPL, with axons terminating on neurons situated in the core region (309). These neurons project to the medial aspects of the S1 cortex.…”

Section: Sensory Inputs To the Thalamus And Cortical Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cellular Circuits in the Brain and Their Modulation in Acute and Chronic Pain

Kuner

2021

Physiological Reviews

213

162

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Chronic, pathological pain remains a global health problem and a challenge to basic and clinical sciences. A major obstacle to preventing, treating or reverting chronic pain has been that the nature of neural circuits underlying the diverse components of the complex, multidimensional experience of pain is not well understood. Moreover, chronic pain involves diverse maladaptive plasticity processes, which have not been decoded mechanistically in terms of involvement of specific circuits and cause-effect relationships. This review aims to discuss recent advances in our understanding of circuit connectivity in the mammalian brain at the level of regional contributions and specific cell types in acute and chronic pain. A major focus is placed on functional dissection of sub-neocortical brain circuits using optogenetics, chemogenetics and imaging technological tools in rodent models with a view towards decoding sensory, affective and motivational-cognitive dimensions of pain. The review summarizes recent breakthroughs and insights on structure-function properties in nociceptive circuits and higher order sub-neocortical modulatory circuits involved in aversion, learning, reward and mood and their modulation by endogenous GABAergic inhibition, noradrenergic, cholinergic, dopaminergic, serotonergic and peptidergic pathways. The knowledge of neural circuits and their dynamic regulation via functional and structural plasticity will be beneficial towards designing and improving targeted therapies.

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Section: Sensory Inputs To the Thalamus And Cortical Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sensory Inputs To the Thalamus And Cortical Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cellular Circuits in the Brain and Their Modulation in Acute and Chronic Pain

Kuner

2021

Physiological Reviews

213

162

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“…It consists of specialized receptors called nociceptors, several nociceptive pathways, and brain structures responsible for processing and modulating diverse responses called nocifensive behaviors such as somatic and autonomic responses, endocrine changes, affective responses, and memory (Westlund and Willis, 2012). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The activation of nociceptors may trigger a number of nocifensive responses or behaviors that include somatic and autonomic reflexes, endocrine changes, motivational and affective responses, the formation of memories, complex conscious pain responses, among others (Westlund and Willis, 2012). Nocifensive and defensive behaviors are hierarchically organized in a series of nested and increasingly complex control loops, which involve at least the periaqueductal gray, hypothalamus, stria terminalis, amygdala, and ultimately the cortex (Canteras, 2002; Blessing and Benarroch, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Robot Motor Learning with Negatively Valenced Reinforcement Signals

Navarro-Guerrero¹,

Lowe

Wermter³

2017

Front. Neurorobot.

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Both nociception and punishment signals have been used in robotics. However, the potential for using these negatively valenced types of reinforcement learning signals for robot learning has not been exploited in detail yet. Nociceptive signals are primarily used as triggers of preprogrammed action sequences. Punishment signals are typically disembodied, i.e., with no or little relation to the agent-intrinsic limitations, and they are often used to impose behavioral constraints. Here, we provide an alternative approach for nociceptive signals as drivers of learning rather than simple triggers of preprogrammed behavior. Explicitly, we use nociception to expand the state space while we use punishment as a negative reinforcement learning signal. We compare the performance—in terms of task error, the amount of perceived nociception, and length of learned action sequences—of different neural networks imbued with punishment-based reinforcement signals for inverse kinematic learning. We contrast the performance of a version of the neural network that receives nociceptive inputs to that without such a process. Furthermore, we provide evidence that nociception can improve learning—making the algorithm more robust against network initializations—as well as behavioral performance by reducing the task error, perceived nociception, and length of learned action sequences. Moreover, we provide evidence that punishment, at least as typically used within reinforcement learning applications, may be detrimental in all relevant metrics.

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Structural connectivity of autonomic, pain, limbic, and sensory brainstem nuclei in living humans based on 7 Tesla and 3 Tesla MRI

Singh

García‐Gomar

Staab

et al. 2022

Human Brain Mapping

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Autonomic, pain, limbic, and sensory processes are mainly governed by the central nervous system, with brainstem nuclei as relay centers for these crucial functions.Yet, the structural connectivity of brainstem nuclei in living humans remains understudied. These tiny structures are difficult to locate using conventional in vivo MRI, and ex vivo brainstem nuclei atlases lack precise and automatic transformability to in vivo images. To fill this gap, we mapped our recently developed probabilistic brainstem nuclei atlas developed in living humans to high-spatial resolution (1.7 mm isotropic) and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) at 7 Tesla in 20 healthy participants.To demonstrate clinical translatability, we also acquired 3 Tesla DWI with conventional resolution (2.5 mm isotropic) in the same participants. Results showed the structural connectome of 15 autonomic, pain, limbic, and sensory (including vestibular) brainstem nuclei/nuclei complex (superior/inferior colliculi, ventral tegmental area-parabrachial pigmented, microcellular tegmental-parabigeminal, lateral/medial parabrachial, vestibular, superior olivary, superior/inferior medullary reticular formation, viscerosensory motor, raphe magnus/pallidus/obscurus, parvicellular reticular nucleus-alpha part), derived from probabilistic tractography computation. Through Kavita Singh and María Guadalupe García-Gomar equally contributed to this work and share first authorship.

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Pain System

Cited by 4 publications

References 455 publications

Cellular Circuits in the Brain and Their Modulation in Acute and Chronic Pain

Cellular Circuits in the Brain and Their Modulation in Acute and Chronic Pain

Improving Robot Motor Learning with Negatively Valenced Reinforcement Signals

Structural connectivity of autonomic, pain, limbic, and sensory brainstem nuclei in living humans based on 7 Tesla and 3 Tesla MRI

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