A spinoparabrachial circuit defined by Tacr1 expression drives pain

• DOI: 10.7554/elife.61135
• Publication Date: 2021-02-16T13:05:16Z
• Authors: Arnab Barik; Anupama Sathyamurthy; James Thompson; Mathew Seltzer; Ariel Levine; Alexander Chesler
• Keywords: Premovement neuronal activity; Biological neural network

Painful stimuli evoke a mixture of sensations, negative emotions and behaviors. These myriad effects are thought to be produced by parallel ascending circuits working in combination. Here, we describe pathway from spinal cord brain for ongoing pain. Activation subset neurons expressing Tacr1 evokes full repertoire somatotopically directed pain-related behaviors the absence noxious input. projection (expressing NKR1) target tiny cluster superior lateral parabrachial nucleus (PBN-SL). We show that these neurons, which also express (PBN-SL