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Pain

Parallel pain pathways

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 6, page 827 (2005)Cite this article

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Nociceptors, which are located in the dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal ganglia, have a peripheral axonal branch that receives sensory information from the peripheral tissues, and a central branch that transmits signals to the spinal cord, from where they are relayed to the brain. There are two main types of nociceptor: peptidergic nociceptors, which express neuropeptides and terminate in the most superficial laminae of the dorsal horn, targeting lamina I projection neurons and interneurons of outer lamina II; and nonpeptidergic nociceptors, which target interneurons of inner lamina II.

In this study, Braz et al. looked at nonpeptidergic circuits by genetically targeting a transneuronal tract tracer, wheat germ agglutinin, to a subpopulation of nonpeptidergic nociceptors that express the tetrodotoxin-resistant sodium channel Nav1.8. They found that the major ascending circuits begin with the interneurons of inner lamina II, which are targeted by nonpeptidergic nociceptors. These interneurons are connected to lamina V projection neurons, which, in turn, target neurons in the amygdala, hypothalamus and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis — limbic regions of the brain that are also targeted by peptidergic nociceptors through a polysynaptic pathway involving the parabrachial nuclei of the dorsolateral pons.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Braz, J. M. et al. Parallel “pain” pathways arise from subpopulations of primary afferent nociceptor. Neuron 47, 787–793 (2005)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Craig, A. D. Pain mechanisms: labeled lines versus convergence in central processing. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 26, 1–30 (2003)

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Authors
  1. Jane Qiu
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Qiu, J. Parallel pain pathways. Nat Rev Neurosci 6, 827 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1800

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