In addition to cold being an important behavioral drive, altered cold sensation frequently accompanies pathological pain states. However, in contrast to peripheral mechanisms, central processing of cold sensory input has received relatively little attention. The present study characterized spinal responses to noxious and innocuous intensities of cold stimulation in vivo and established the exte...

As postsynaptic metabotropic subtype 1 (mGlu1) receptors are present in the thalamus, we have investigated the effect of potentiating and antagonising mGlu1 receptors on responses of thalamic neurones to noxious sensory stimulation. Extracellular recordings were made in vivo with multi-barrel iontophoretic electrodes from single neurones in the thalamus of urethane-anaesthetised rats. Responses...

To understand characteristics of the pain system in the elderly, we investigated the electrophysiological properties of nociceptive neurons in the lumbar spinal dorsal horn of aged (29-34-mo old) and adult (7-13-mo old) rats. The responses of nociceptive neurons to noxious thermal stimulation, as well as the spontaneous firing rate, were significantly higher in the aged as compared with adult r...

Suppression of spinal responses to noxious stimulation has been detected using spinal fMRI during placebo analgesia, which is therefore increasingly considered a phenomenon caused by descending inhibition of spinal activity. However, spinal fMRI is technically challenging and prone to false-positive results. Here we recorded laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) during placebo analgesia in humans. LEP...

Objectives: Crocin, a constituent of saffron and yellow gardenia, possesses anti-nociceptive effects. In the present study, we investigated the effects of intra-fourth ventricle injection of crocin in a rat model of orofacial pain. The contribution of opioid system was assessed using intra-fourth ventricle injection of naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist. Materials and Methods: A guide cann...

a b s t r a c t introduction: aloe vera extract is used as an anti-inflammatory and anti-bradikinin agent in laboratory animals. the aim of this survey was to evaluate the ant-nociceptive effect of a. vera aqueous extract in fructose-fed male rats. methods: forty-five wistar-albino male rats were equally and randomly divided into five groups including sham operated and four test groups. sham op...

fruits of olea europaea l. have been used for centuries in folk medicine to treat many inflammatory diseases. in order to evaluate the anti-nociceptive activities of the methanolic and aqueous extracts of defatted fruits of o. europaea, formalin test was used and for evaluation of anti-inflammatory effects of the extract, the volume of paw edema was measured. the results revealed that both extr...

introduction: glabrous skin and hairy skin are innervated by different types of noxious fibers. however, the different nociceptive behaviors induced by formalin, a commonly used model of acute inflammatory pain, have not yet been systematically examined in the glabrous and hairy skin. methods: in this study, we compared nociceptive behaviors induced by formalin injections (2%, 4%, and 8%) into ...

NMDA receptor involvement in neuroplastic changes induced by neonatal capsaicin treatment in trigeminal nociceptive neurons. J. Neurophysiol. 78: 2799-2803, 1997. This study examines whether 1) the neonatal loss of C-fiber afferents results in neuroplastic changes in the mechanoreceptive field (RF) properties and spontaneous activity of nociceptive neurons in trigeminal subnucleus caudalis (med...