Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, PR China.
Auditory Research Laboratory, Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, PR China.
Science. 2022 Jul 8;377(6602):198-204. doi: 10.1126/science.abn4663. Epub 2022 Jul 7.
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 (SNR) relative to ambient noise in mice. Viral tracing, microendoscopic calcium imaging, and multitetrode recordings in freely moving mice showed that low-SNR sounds inhibited glutamatergic inputs from the auditory cortex (ACx) to the thalamic posterior (PO) and ventral posterior (VP) nuclei. Optogenetic or chemogenetic inhibition of the ACx→PO and ACx→VP circuits mimicked the low-SNR sound-induced analgesia in inflamed hindpaws and forepaws, respectively. Artificial activation of these two circuits abolished the sound-induced analgesia. Our study reveals the corticothalamic circuits underlying sound-promoted analgesia by deciphering the role of the auditory system in pain processing.
声音（包括音乐和噪音）可以减轻人类的疼痛，但背后的神经机制尚不清楚。我们发现，声音的镇痛效果取决于相对于环境噪声的低（5 分贝）信噪比（SNR）。在自由活动的小鼠中进行病毒追踪、微内窥镜钙成像和多电极记录显示，低 SNR 声音抑制了来自听觉皮层（ACx）到丘脑后（PO）和腹后（VP）核的谷氨酸能输入。光遗传或化学遗传抑制 ACx→PO 和 ACx→VP 回路分别模拟了炎症后足和前足的低 SNR 声音诱导的镇痛作用。人工激活这两个回路会消除声音诱导的镇痛作用。我们的研究通过破译听觉系统在疼痛处理中的作用，揭示了皮质丘脑回路在声音促进镇痛中的作用。
