Ph.D. Goteborg Univ., Sweden
The central processes in the medial pain system involved in emotional responses to acute and chronic pain remain largely unresolved. In the medial pain system, high threshold afferents from somatic regions have been shown to access neurons in the medial thalamus (MT) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Our long-term research objective is to investigate the nociceptive mechanism underlying the affective/emotional aspect of acute and chronic pain conveyed by the medial pain system. Recently we focused our attention to investigate the neuronal mechanisms underlying the central post stroke pain.
During the course of the studying of the thalamocingulate network activities, we developed a novel technique to prepare brain slice which contains intact thalamocingulate pathway. This preparation allows us to study the cellular mechanism underlying the information transmission in thalamocingulate circuitry in vitro. We also found that spontaneous seizure-like activities could be induced in this slice preparation. Thus it provides us a unique opportunity to study the cellular mechanism underlying the cingulate epilepsy. We thus develop another direction in epileptic research. The aims of our research in epileptic research were addressed to following issues: Thalamic modulation of cingulate epilepsy, gap junctions involved in the modulation of cingulate epilepsy, modulation of the direct current field stimulation and the cortical seizure regulated by optical stimulation of reticular thalamic nucleus.