Sound induces analgesia through corticothalamic circuits

• DOI: 10.1126/science.abn4663
• Publication Date: 2022-07-07T17:55:32Z
• Authors: Wenjie Zhou; Chonghuan Ye; Haitao Wang; Yu Mao; Weijia Zhang; An Liu; Chen-Ling Yang; Tianming Li; Lauren Hayashi; Wan Zhao; Lin Chen; Yuanyuan Liu; Wenjuan Tao; Zhi Zhang
• Keywords: Biological neural network; Calcium imaging

Sound-including music and noise-can relieve pain in humans, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unknown. We discovered that analgesic effects of sound depended on a low (5-decibel) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) relative to ambient noise mice. Viral tracing, microendoscopic calcium imaging, multitetrode recordings freely moving mice showed low-SNR sounds inhibited glutamatergic inputs from auditory cortex (ACxGlu) thalamic posterior (PO) ventral (VP) nuclei. Optogenetic or chemogenetic inhibition ACxGlu→PO ACxGlu→VP circuits mimicked sound-induced analgesia inflamed hindpaws forepaws, respectively. Artificial activation these two abolished analgesia. Our study reveals corticothalamic sound-promoted by deciphering role system processing.