School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China.
Department of Anatomy and Physiology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China.
Neuron. 2023 Aug 2;111(15):2414-2431.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.032. Epub 2023 May 23.
Pain and itch are two closely related but essentially distinct sensations that elicit different behavioral responses. However, it remains mysterious how pain and itch information is encoded in the brain to produce differential perceptions. Here, we report that nociceptive and pruriceptive signals are separately represented and processed by distinct neural ensembles in the prelimbic (PL) subdivision of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in mice. Pain- and itch-responsive cortical neural ensembles were found to significantly differ in electrophysiological properties, input-output connectivity profiles, and activity patterns to nociceptive or pruriceptive stimuli. Moreover, these two groups of cortical neural ensembles oppositely modulate pain- or itch-related sensory and emotional behaviors through their preferential projections to specific downstream regions such as the mediodorsal thalamus (MD) and basolateral amygdala (BLA). These findings uncover separate representations of pain and itch by distinct prefrontal neural ensembles and provide a new framework for understanding somatosensory information processing in the brain.
疼痛和瘙痒是两种密切相关但本质上不同的感觉，它们会引发不同的行为反应。然而，疼痛和瘙痒信息如何在大脑中编码以产生不同的感知仍然是个谜。在这里，我们报告说，伤害性和瘙痒性信号分别由小鼠内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）的前扣带皮层（PL）亚区中的不同神经集合体来表示和处理。发现疼痛和瘙痒反应性皮质神经集合体在电生理特性、输入-输出连接谱和对伤害性或瘙痒性刺激的活动模式方面存在显著差异。此外，这两组皮质神经集合体通过其对特定下游区域（如中背侧丘脑（MD）和基底外侧杏仁核（BLA））的优先投射，对疼痛或瘙痒相关的感觉和情绪行为进行相反的调节。这些发现揭示了不同的前额叶神经集合体对疼痛和瘙痒的独立表示，并为理解大脑中的躯体感觉信息处理提供了一个新的框架。
