The discovery of imidazoline ligands has opened up a new field of study. The investigation of imidazoline actions independent of adrenoceptors started in the mid 1980s. Imidazoline receptors are classified in several subtypes, I1, I2 and I3 binding sites. Although imidazoline sites have been the subjects of research for several years, but there is still controversy about their actions especiall...

Introduction The interest in conditioned pain modulation (CPM) as a clinical tool for measuring endogenously induced analgesia is increasing. There is, however, large variation in the CPM methodology, hindering comparison of results across studies. Research comparing different CPM protocols is needed in order to obtain a standardized test paradigm. Objectives The aim of the study was to asses...

BACKGROUND/AIM Nitric oxide (NO) may be involved in non-adrenergic non-cholinergic (NANC) inhibitory innervation of the sphincter of Oddi (SO). The effects of topical application of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), a NO donor, upon SO motility were examined. METHODS Nineteen patients undergoing routine SO manometry for investigation of abdominal pain were studied. After routine recording of SO moti...

The interruptive effect of painful experimental stimulation on cognitive processes is a well-known phenomenon. This study investigated the influence of pain duration on the negative effects of pain on cognition. Thirty-four healthy volunteers performed a rapid serial visual presentation task (RSVP) in which subjects had to detect (visual detection task) and count the occurrence of a target lett...

BACKGROUND Functional abdominal pain syndrome (FAPS) has chronic unexplained abdominal pain and is similar to the psychiatric diagnosis of somatoform pain disorder. A patient with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) also has chronic unexplained abdominal pain, and rectal hypersensitivity is observed in a majority of the patients. However, no reports have evaluated the visceral sensory function of FA...

Behavioral and electrophysiological evidences have shown that locus ceruleus (LC) is involved in different tasks including modulation of sensory processing and shift of attention. In the present study, single unit responses of barrel cortical cells was recorded following controlled mechanical displacement of the principal and peripheral vibrissae in adult rats (100 trials of 200 µm deflection f...

The facial expression of pain plays a crucial role in pain communication and pain diagnostics. Despite its importance, it has remained unknown which dimensions of pain (sensory and/or affective) are encoded in the face. To answer this question, we used a well-established cognitive strategy (suggestions) to differentially modulate the sensory and affective dimensions of pain and investigate the ...

The segregation of geniculo-cortical afferents into ocular dominance columns is an activity-dependent process. It was hypothesized that this process is susceptible to the temporal patterning of the retinal input. Accordingly, asynchronous activation of the two eyes should enhance ocular dominance segregation but synchronous activation should decrease or prevent it. In order to test the second p...