Analgesia induced by localized injection of opiate peptides into the brain of infant rats.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Stimulation of a variety of brain sites electrically or by opiates activates descending inhibitory pathways to attenuate noxious input to the spinal cord dorsal horn and produce analgesia. Analgesia induced by electrical stimulation of the periaqueductal grey (PAG) of the midbrain or medial rostral ventral medulla (RVM) matures late, towards the end or past the pre-weaning period. Descending facilitation takes precedence over inhibition. Yet opiates injected intracerebroventricularly or directly into the PAG induce analgesia relatively early in development. Our goal was to re-examine the role of opiates specific to individual receptor types in analgesia at several supraspinal sites.

Methods

Antinociception was tested following microinjection of DAMGO (μ-opiate ago

SUBMITTER: Barr GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3594337 | biostudies-literature | 2013 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature