ArticleMolecular pain
Activation of ventral tegmental area dopaminergic neurons reverses pathological allodynia resulting from nerve injury or bone cancer.
Article in Molecular pain. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Activation of the zona incerta GABAergic circuit for the treatment of pain hypersensitivity in Parkinson's disease mice model.The journal of headache and pain · 2025Article
- Reprogramming neural-tumor crosstalk: emerging therapeutic dimensions and targeting strategies.Military Medical Research · 2025Review
- Opposing effects of mu opioid receptors on dopamine D1 and D2 receptor expressing neurons in opioid mediated antinociception.The journal of pain · 2025Article
- A Novel Mouse Model of the Glucocorticoid Withdrawal Syndrome.Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2025Article
- Chronic pain selectively reduces the motivation to work for remifentanil but not food reward.Pain · 2025Article
- A Neural Circuit From Paraventricular Nucleus of the Thalamus to the Nucleus Accumbens Mediates Inflammatory Pain in Mice.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Modulation of comorbid depression of neuropathic pain by dopamine input from VTA to the ventral hippocampus.Theranostics · 2025Article
- Neurobiology of bruxism: The impact of stress (Review).Biomedical reports · 2024Review
- Transcriptional Dysregulation of Cholesterol Synthesis Underlies Hyposensitivity to GABA in the Ventral Tegmental Area During Acute Alcohol Withdrawal.Biological psychiatry · 2024Article
- An Ascending Excitatory Circuit from the Dorsal Raphe for Sensory Modulation of Pain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Ventral tegmental area dopaminergic circuits participates in stress-induced chronic postsurgical pain in male mice.BMC neuroscience · 2024Article
- Differential Roles of the D1- and D2-Like Dopamine Receptors Within the Ventral Tegmental Area in Modulating the Antinociception Induced by Forced Swim Stress in the Rat.Neurochemical research · 2024Article
- Nutrient insufficiencies and deficiencies involved in the pathogenesis of bruxism (Review).Experimental and therapeutic medicine · 2023Review
- Dynamics of Lateral Habenula-Ventral Tegmental Area Microcircuit on Pain-Related Cognitive Dysfunctions.Neurology international · 2023Review
- Collateral projections from the ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra pars compacta to the nucleus accumbens and insular cortex in the rat.Anatomical science international · 2023Article
- A glutamatergic DRN-VTA pathway modulates neuropathic pain and comorbid anhedonia-like behavior in mice.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Chronic inflammatory pain promotes place preference for fentanyl in male rats but does not change fentanyl self-administration in male and female rats.Neuropharmacology · 2023Article
- Disinhibition of Mesolimbic Dopamine Circuit by the Lateral Hypothalamus Regulates Pain Sensation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Cancer aggravation due to persistent pain signals with the increased expression of pain-related mediators in sensory neurons of tumor-bearing mice.Molecular brain · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
18 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Chronic pain induced by nerve damage due to trauma or invasion of cancer to the bone elicits severe ongoing pain as well as hyperalgesia and allodynia likely reflecting adaptive changes within central circuits that amplify nociceptive signals. The present study explored the possible contribution of the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit in promoting allodynia related to neuropathic and cancer pain. Mice with ligation of the sciatic nerve or treated with intrafemoral osteosarcoma cells showed allodynia to a thermal stimulus applied to the paw on the injured side. Patch clamp electrophysiology revealed that the intrinsic neuronal excitability of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons projecting to the nucleus accumbens (N.Acc.) was significantly reduced in those mice. We used tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-cre mice that were microinjected with adeno-associated virus (AAV) to express channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) to allow optogenetic stimulation of VTA dopaminergic neurons in the VTA or in their N.Acc. terminals. Optogenetic activation of these cells produced a significant but transient anti-allodynic effect in nerve injured or tumor-bearing mice without increasing response thresholds to thermal stimulation in sham-operated animals. Suppressed activity of mesolimbic dopaminergic neurons is likely to contribute to decreased inhibition of N.Acc. output neurons and to neuropathic or cancer pain-induced allodynia suggesting strategies for modulation of pathological pain states.
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