Neural Circuits and Mechanisms Underlying Chronic Pain

The effective management of pain continues to be a major challenge for all societies in large part because pain treatments remain inadequate. A better understanding of the neural mechanisms that cause pain is critical if we want to identify and develop more effective treatments.

Our laboratory studies the spinal dorsal horn, an area of the nervous system that plays a central role in somatosensation including both acute and chronic pain.

We use cutting edge approaches to better understand how the dorsal horn circuitry processes somatosensory information and gives rise to chronic pain. We are actively pursuing the development of novel strategies to treat intractable pain.

Neural Circuits Controlling Movement in Parkinson’s Disease.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is caused by the progressive loss of substantia nigra pars compacta dopamine neurons and is characterized by motor deficits such as akinesia (no movement) and bradykinesia (slowed movement). The decrease in dorsal striatum dopamine signaling contributes to the motor symptoms in PD by altering the relative output of striatal direct and indirect pathway spiny projection neurons.

Our laboratory has identified a novel form of striatal plasticity that dramatically delays the onset of motor deficits in a model of PD. We are now focused on identifying the mechanism(s) underlying preserved motor function at molecular, cellular and circuit levels. We use proteomics, DREADDs, rabies tracing, functional circuit mapping and in vivo calcium imaging.