ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2018
Brain Circuits Mediating Opposing Effects on Emotion and Pain.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers.
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Who cites it
62 citing papers in PubMed, 116 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinct parafascicular neuronal ensembles mediate the sensory and affective dimensions of trigeminal neuralgia.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2026Article
- The basolateral amygdala decodes visceral pain and itch via distinct circuits and molecules.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A Dnmt3a-Mediated Epigenetic Mechanism for Chronic-Pain-Induced Behaviors of Negative Emotion in Mice.Cells · 2026Article
- The Upregulation of AIM2 in the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala Correlates with Pain Induced by Tooth Movement.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- A top-down neural circuit for affective-motivational responses of pain relief induced by electroacupuncture.Chinese medicine · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of the trigeminal-lateral parabrachial-rostroventral medullary circuits involved in experimental occlusal interference induced chronic orofacial pain.The journal of headache and pain · 2026Article
- Chronic stress increases the susceptibility to chronic vulvar pain following acute vulvar inflammation in a preclinical model of vulvodynia.Molecular brain · 2026Article
- Mechanisms and Clinical Application Progress of Exercise in the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2026Review
- Exploring Mechanistic Insights by Carotenoids in Neuropathic and Inflammatory Pain.Current neuropharmacology · 2026Review
- Uncovering the role of c-Fos in the bidirectional relationship between depression/anxiety behaviors and α-synuclein propagation in Parkinson's disease.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2026Article
- Single Inhalation of Peppermint Essential Oil Alleviates Acute Restraint Stress-Exacerbated Itch in Oxazolone-Induced Mild Dermatitis: Correlations With Brain Neuronal Activity in Female BALB/c Mouse.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Remote automated delivery of mechanical stimuli coupled to brain recordings in behaving mice.eLife · 2025Article
- Recent Insights on Supraspinal Astrocytes in Chronic Pain.Neurochemical research · 2025Review
- The Involvement of Glutamate-mGluR5 Signaling in the Development of Vulvar Hypersensitivity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Excitation-inhibition imbalance in medial preoptic area circuits underlies chronic stress-induced depression-like states.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Neural circuits regulating visceral pain.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Altered volume of the amygdala subregions in patients with chronic low back pain.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- The projection from dorsal medial prefrontal cortex to basolateral amygdala promotes behaviors of negative emotion in rats.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Prosocial decision-making under time pressure: Behavioral and neural mechanisms.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Recent advances in anxiety disorders: Focus on animal models and pathological mechanisms.Animal models and experimental medicine · 2023Review
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The amygdala is important for processing emotion, including negative emotion such as anxiety and depression induced by chronic pain. Although remarkable progress has been achieved in recent years on amygdala regulation of both negative (fear) and positive (reward) behavioral responses, our current understanding is still limited regarding how the amygdala processes and integrates these negative and positive emotion responses within the amygdala circuits. In this study with optogenetic stimulation of specific brain circuits, we investigated how amygdala circuits regulate negative and positive emotion behaviors, using pain as an emotional assay in male rats. We report here that activation of the excitatory pathway from the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) that relays peripheral pain signals to the central nucleus of amygdala (CeA) is sufficient to cause behaviors of negative emotion including anxiety, depression, and aversion in normal rats. In strong contrast, activation of the excitatory pathway from basolateral amygdala (BLA) that conveys processed corticolimbic signals to CeA dramatically opposes these behaviors of negative emotion, reducing anxiety and depression, and induces behavior of reward. Surprisingly, activating the PBN-CeA pathway to simulate pain signals does not change pain sensitivity itself, but activating the BLA-CeA pathway inhibits basal and sensitized pain. These findings demonstrate that the pain signal conveyed through the PBN-CeA pathway is sufficient to drive negative emotion and that the corticolimbic signal via the BLA-CeA pathway counteracts the negative emotion, suggesting a top-down brain mechanism for cognitive control of negative emotion under stressful environmental conditions such as pain.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.