Center for Neural Science, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea.
PLoS One. 2013 Jun 24;8(6):e67655. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067655. eCollection 2013.
The thalamus has been proposed to play a role in sensory modulation via switching between tonic and burst dual firing of individual neurons. Of the two firing modes, altered burst firing has been repeatedly implicated with pathological pain conditions, which suggests that maintaining a certain form of thalamic burst could be crucial for controlling pain. However, specific elements of burst firing that may contribute to pain control have not yet been actively investigated. Utilizing the deep brain stimulation (DBS) technique, we explored the effects of bursting properties in pain control by electrically stimulating the ventrobasal (VB) thalamus in forms of burst patterned to test different aspects of bursts during the formalin induced nociception in mice. Our results demonstrated that electrical stimulations mimicking specific burst firing properties are important in producing an anti-nociceptive effect and found that the ≤ 3 ms interval between burst pluses (intra-burst-interval: IntraBI) and ≥ 3 pulses per burst were required to reliably reduce formalin induced nociceptive responses in mice. Periodicity of IntraBI was also suggested to contribute to anti-nociception to a limited extent.
丘脑被认为通过个体神经元的紧张性和爆发性双重放电之间的转换在感觉调制中发挥作用。在这两种放电模式中，爆发性放电的改变与病理性疼痛状态反复相关，这表明维持某种形式的丘脑爆发可能对控制疼痛至关重要。然而，可能有助于疼痛控制的爆发放电的具体要素尚未得到积极研究。我们利用深部脑刺激（DBS）技术，通过电刺激腹侧基底核（VB）丘脑，以爆发模式刺激，探索了爆发特性在疼痛控制中的作用，以测试在小鼠福尔马林诱导的伤害感受过程中爆发的不同方面。我们的结果表明，模拟特定爆发放电特性的电刺激对于产生抗伤害效应非常重要，并且发现爆发性脉冲之间的≤3ms 间隔（爆发内间隔：IntraBI）和≥3 个脉冲/爆发是可靠地减少小鼠福尔马林诱导的伤害性反应所必需的。IntraBI 的周期性也被认为在一定程度上有助于抗伤害作用。
