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The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 87 No. 1 January 2002, pp. 103-112
Copyright ©2002 by the American Physiological Society
Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences and Marine Biomedical Institute, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas 77555-1069
Neugebauer, Volker and
Weidong Li.
Processing of Nociceptive Mechanical and Thermal Information
in Central Amygdala Neurons With Knee-Joint Input. J. Neurophysiol. 87: 103-112, 2002. Pain has a strong
emotional dimension, and the amygdala plays a key role in emotionality.
The processing of nociceptive mechanical and thermal information was
studied in individual neurons of the central nucleus of the amygdala,
the target of the spino-parabrachio-amygdaloid pain pathway and a major
output nucleus of the amygdala. This study is the first to characterize
nociceptive amygdala neurons with input from deep tissue, particularly
the knee joint. In 46 anesthetized rats, extracellular single-unit
recordings were made from 119 central amygdala neurons that were
activated orthodromically by electrical stimulation in the lateral
pontine parabrachial area and were tested for receptive fields in the
knee joints. Responses to brief mechanical stimulation of joints,
muscles, and skin and to cutaneous thermal stimuli were recorded.
Receptive-field sizes and thresholds were mapped and stimulus-response
functions constructed. Neurons in the central nucleus of the amygdala
with excitatory input from the knee joint (n = 62)
typically had large symmetrical receptive fields in both hindlimbs or
in all four extremities and responded exclusively or preferentially to
noxious mechanical stimulation of deep tissue (n = 58).
Noxious mechanical stimulation of the skin excited 30 of these neurons;
noxious heat activated 21 neurons. Stimulus-response data were best
fitted by a sigmoid nonlinear regression model rather than by a
monotonically increasing linear function. Another 15 neurons were
inhibited by noxious mechanical stimulation of the knee joint and other deep tissue. Fifteen neurons had no receptive field in the knee but
responded to noxious stimulation of other body areas; 27 nonresponsive neurons were not activated by natural somesthetic stimulation. Our data
suggest that excitation is the predominant effect of brief painful
stimulation of somatic tissue on the population of central
amygdala neurons with knee joint input. Their large symmetrical
receptive fields and sigmoid rather than monotonically increasing
linear stimulus-response functions suggest a role of nociceptive
central amygdala neurons in other than sensory-discriminative aspects
of pain.
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