A team of researchers led by Professor HU Li from the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered how specific brain cells (called parvalbumin (PV) interneurons) within a particular part of the brain (the primary somatosensory cortex) are responsible for feeling pain and creating brain waves known as gamma oscillations (GBOs).
Their study bridges a gap in our understanding of these pain-related brain waves and their role in pain perception.
The findings suggest that these brain waves might be used to develop new treatments for pain.
Why Is This Important? Pain causes a lot of suffering and leads to substantial economic costs every year. Assessing and treating pain accurately is hard because pain is a subjective experience. Researchers are working hard to find reliable ways to measure and understand pain.
Previous research showed that these gamma oscillations (GBOs) are linked to pain in both humans and animals, making them potential indicators of pain.
However, how these brain waves are generated was poorly understood, limiting their use in medical settings.
What Did the Researchers Do? To tackle this issue, Professor HU and his team conducted a series of experiments on both humans and rodents. They used different techniques to record brain activity and observed how different sensory stimuli (painful and non-painful) affected brain waves.
They found that GBOs in the brain precisely correspond to pain intensity in humans and are closely linked to the activity of PV interneurons in rodents. By manipulating these cells, they could change the brain waves and pain behaviours.
This research shows that PV interneurons play a crucial role in how the brain encodes pain, which could have significant implications for developing new pain treatments.
“These findings are important for understanding how the brain processes pain and could help in using GBOs as markers for pain in clinical practice and drug development,” says Professor HU Li.