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. Pain itself is an emotion produced by the brain, however, information critical for forming the percept of pain travels first through the spinal dorsal horn from the environment and from internal organs and tissues. Injuries and diseases can alter how the spinal dorsal horn processes this information leading to 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 also actively identifying and developing novel gene therapies 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 resulting decrease in dopamine released into the dorsal striatum contributes to the motor symptoms in PD through by altering the output of striatal direct and indirect pathway spiny projection neurons.

Our laboratory has identified a novel form of striatal plasticity that delays the onset of motor symptoms in a mouse model of PD for months. We are now focused on identifying the mechanism at the molecular, cellular and circuit levels. We are using proteomics, viral interventions, circuit mapping and in vivo calcium imaging to better understand this profound observation and to use it to develop a new treatment for PD.