Researchers have found that dopamine affects the neurons of male and female mice in different ways, a discovery which could have great potential in pain management for women, who suffer pain disproportionately throughout their lives.
Dopamine, popularly known as the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’, is implicated in many functions, including the reward pathways and also the pain-relieving pathways associated with heroin that the researchers were focussing on. Dopamine is also suggested to be involved in attention, suggesting a link between substance abuse, pain and attention.
“We focused on this neural pathway because our previous work and that of others show that specific neurons release dopamine to regulate pain responses,” explained Thomas Kash, PhD, the John R Andrews Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, School of Medicine lab, University of North Carolina. “Unfortunately, that research was done only in male mice. So we decided to look at both male and female mice, and what we found was very surprising.”
Previous research from Dr Kash’s lab using male mice showed that dopaminergic neurons were key in how opiates dampen pain, likely through dopamine and glutamate release. The new experiments focussed on a neural pathway starting at the midbrain region called the periaqueductal grey, including part of the dorsal raphe.
This brain region is involved in behavioural adaptation, which is the way animals respond to their environment. The dopamine-producing neurons in this region form a neural pathway with a structure known as the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST).
“We found that activating this pathway reduced pain sensitivity in male mice, but made female mice move more, especially in the presence of something capturing their attention,” said first author Waylin Yu, PhD, a former graduate student in the Kash lab and current postdoctoral researcher at UC San Francisco. “We think this is because of the different ways males and females respond to pain.”
This seems to indicate that dopamine helps male mice simply not feel as much pain, while female mice are able to focus their attention elsewhere while experiencing pain.
While further investigation is needed, the results appear to show that the activation of specific neural projections to the BNST reduces acute and persistent inflammatory pain. This adds to the evidence that dopamine signaling can enhance the blocking of pain stimuli, counteracting severe pain.
“We hope to investigate how this pathway can regulate more emotional behaviours associated with chronic pain, and then also look at the dynamics of the system, such as how this pathway works in real time during behaviour measurements,” Dr Kash said. “These neurons are also implicated in the actions of opioids such as morphine, so we plan to investigate that domain, as well.”
Source: News-Medical.Net
