Neural circuit remodeling and structural plasticity in the cortex during chronic pain

• 영문명: Neural circuit remodeling and structural plasticity in the cortex during chronic pain
• 발행기관: 대한생리학회-대한약리학회
• 저자명: Woojin Kim Sun Kwang Kim
• 간행물 정보: 『The Korean Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology』제20권 제1호, 1~8쪽, 전체 8쪽
• 주제분류: 의약학 > 의학일반
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2016.01.01

영문 초록

Damage in the periphery or spinal cord induces maladaptive plastic changes along the somatosensory nervous system from the periphery to the cortex, often leading to chronic pain. Although the role of neural circuit remodeling and structural synaptic plasticity in the ‘pain matrix’ cortices in chronic pain has been thought as a secondary epiphenomenon to altered nociceptive signaling in the spinal cord, progress in whole brain imaging studies on human patients and animal models has suggested a possibility that plastic changes in cortical neural circuits may actively contribute to chronic pain symptoms. Furthermore, recent development in two-photon microscopy and fluorescence labeling techniques have enabled us to longitudinally trace the structural and functional changes in local circuits, single neurons and even individual synapses in the brain of living animals. These technical advances has started to reveal that cortical structural remodeling following tissue or nerve damage could rapidly occur within days, which are temporally correlated with functional plasticity of cortical circuits as well as the development and maintenance of chronic pain behavior, thereby modifying the previous concept that it takes much longer periods (e.g. months or years). In this review, we discuss the relation of neural circuit plasticity in the ‘pain matrix’ cortices, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex and primary somatosensory cortex, with chronic pain. We also introduce how to apply long-term in vivo two-photon imaging approaches for the study of pathophysiological mechanisms of chronic pain.

키워드

Chronic pain Neural circuit remodeling Pain matrix Structural synaptic plasticity Two-photon microscopy