Painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN) is characterized by hyperalgesia i.e., increased sensitivity to noxious stimulus, and allodynia i.e., hypersensitivity to normally innocuous stimuli. Hyperalgesia and allodynia have been studied in many different rodent models of diabetes mellitus. However, as stated by Bölcskei et al, determination of "pain" in animal models is challenging due to its subjectiv...

We recently demonstrated that application of mustard oil (MO), a small-fiber excitant and inflammatory irritant, to the rat maxillary molar tooth pulp induces significant and prolonged increases in jaw muscle electromyographic (EMG) activity that are suggestive of central neuroplasticity. Because small-fiber afferents, including pulp afferents, access nociceptive neurons in trigeminal (V) subnu...

UNLABELLED The nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) is a physiological tool to study spinal nociception. However, NFR assessment can take several minutes and expose participants to repeated suprathreshold stimulations. The 4 studies reported here assessed the reliability and validity of a brief method to assess NFR threshold that uses a single ascending series of stimulations (Peak 1 NFR), by compa...

This study evaluated the impact of sex on the short term consequences of different periods of sleep deprivation and the effect of the respective sleep recovery periods on nociceptive responses. Male and female C57BL/6J mice were assigned to the following groups: paradoxical sleep deprived (PSD) for 72 h, sleep restricted (SR) for 15 days, exposed to respective recovery periods for 24 h, or untr...

Abstract For the progress of artificial neural networks, imitation multiple biological functions is indispensable for processing more tasks in a complex working environment. Memristors, which possess these advantages such as uniformity, high switching speed, and smaller device scale, are better candidates compared to conventional complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology network...

TO THE EDITOR: In their study on factor analysis of brain responses to different stimulus modalities, Mouraux and Iannetti (2009) claimed that laser-evoked brain potentials do not reflect nociceptive-specific neural activity, although laser radiant heat pulses provide a purely nociceptive input. We appreciate this reanalysis of visual, auditory, and somatosensory vertex potentials using modern ...

Postsynaptic autophosphorylation of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) at Thr286/287 is crucial for the induction of long-term potentiation at many glutamatergic synapses, and has also been implicated in the persistence of synaptic potentiation. However, the availability of CaMKII phosphorylated at Thr286/287 at individual glutamatergic synapses in vivo is unclear. We used pos...