Nerve injury disrupts temporal processing in the spinal cord dorsal horn through alterations in PV⁺ interneurons.

ABSTRACT: How mechanical allodynia following nerve injury is encoded in patterns of neural activity in the spinal cord dorsal horn (DH) remains incompletely understood. We address this in mice using the spared nerve injury model of neuropathic pain and in vivo electrophysiological recordings. Surprisingly, despite dramatic behavioral over-reactivity to mechanical stimuli following nerve injury, an overall increase in sensitivity or reactivity of DH neurons is not observed. We do, however, observe a marked decrease in correlated neural firing patterns, including the synchrony of mechanical stimulus-evoked firing, across the DH. Alterations in DH temporal firing patterns are recapitulated by silencing DH parvalbumin⁺ (PV⁺) interneurons, previously implicated in mechanical allodyn

SUBMITTER: Rankin G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11101906 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature