Long-term potentiation in spinal nociceptive systems—how acute pain may become chronic
Section snippets
Synaptic plasticity in the superficial spinal dorsal horn
Most of the data regarding LTP in the superficial spinal dorsal horn have been collected in Jürgen Sandkühler's laboratories in Heidelberg and Vienna and are reviewed in more detail elsewhere (Sandkühler, 2000, Sandkühler et al., 2000). Briefly, repetitive high frequency electrical stimulation (HFS) of the sciatic nerve induces LTP of synaptic transmission in Aδ-(Randic et al., 1993) and C-fibres (Liu and Sandkühler, 1995, Liu and Sandkühler, 1997) in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, strong
LTP in deep spinal WDR neurons
The deeper laminae of the spinal cord (lamina IV–VI) constitute mainly WDR neurons in contrast to the superficial laminae, where nociceptive specific (NS) neurons are prevalent (Bester et al., 2000). The role of the deep WDR cells in nociceptive processing is debated, but extensive studies show they have a great ability to code noxious and innocuous stimuli (Suzuki et al., 2002), and it is widely accepted that these neurons have a pivotal role in transmission of painful inputs. It has long been
Implications of LTP in pain pathways
The reviewed literature strongly indicates that strength at nociceptive synapses in the spinal cord can be potentiated following electrical and natural noxious peripheral stimulation, and broadly speaking the more intense the noxious stimulation is, the longer the potentiation lasts (Liu and Sandkühler, 1995, Liu and Sandkühler, 1997, Sandkuhler and Liu, 1998). Only extreme natural noxious stimulation induces LTP in intact animals (Rygh et al., 1999) and moderate to intense natural noxious
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2014, International Journal of PsychophysiologyCitation Excerpt :The discovery of a synaptic long-term plasticity in the nociceptive system may explain the central mechanisms underlying sensitization in several forms of pain suggesting that these mechanisms may help to explain hyperalgesia, allodynia, and analgesia (Sandkuhler, 2000; Treede et al., 1992; Woolf and Salter, 2000). In addition, the generation of LTP may be one of the mechanisms whereby acute pain may turn into chronic pain (Klein et al., 2004; Rygh et al., 2002, 2005; Sandkuhler, 2000, 2007). In this study, we developed an experimental model of episodic pain using daily high intensity electrical stimulation to investigate peripheral vasomotor responses, cortical manifestations, and psychophysical responses in a group of healthy individuals.
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