Functional dissection of neural circuitry underlying pain signalling. (360G-Wellcome-109372_Z_15_Z)

It is estimated that up to one in five Europeans suffers from chronic pain. This has a large impact on the quality of life of individuals and on our society as a whole. The lack of effective treatments is largely because the fundamental mechanisms that signal pain remain obscure. The proposed research aims to understand how sensory information is encoded at nociceptors and then processed in the spinal cord. Advanced optical and genetic tools will be used to precisely control the activity of two nociceptive primary afferent neuron subpopulations that project into the dorsal horn of the spinal cord with little overlap. The specific aims are to determine: 1) How nociceptors encode sensory information, by defining their tuning and how their spiking activity relates to behaviour; and 2) how spinal cord circuits process nociceptive input, by examining how information is integrated in the spinal cord, and how it is transformed in models of chronic pain. The proposed research aims to dissect o ut these mechanisms with the goal of leading to better treatments for chronic pain.