32nd USIAS Fellows seminar: Oxytocin and pain

By Alexandre Charlet, USIAS Fellow 2014

Pain is a complex phenomenon involving several brain structures grouped together in the “pain matrix”. The key structures responsible for the emotional aspect of pain, the anterior cingulate cortex and the central amygdala, are innervated by axonal hypothalamic oxytocin projections. Thanks to the new possibilities offered by viral manipulation and optogenetic tools, it is possible to carry out a fine spatial-temporal identification and a functional characterization of the various key structures in pain.

If successful, this USIAS project will provide a major contribution to our understanding of the role of oxytocin in pain processing in key structures of the pain matrix. We expect that our integrative analyses, from virus engineering to behavioural studies, will clearly decipher the involvement of oxytocin neurons in pain.

We expect that besides the results obtained on oxytocin, this study will result in the generalization of optogenetic tools for neuropeptides. Indeed, though optogenetics is nowadays widely used, only a few studies concern neuropeptides because of the challenge it represents.

Additionally, our results will shed light on our general comprehension of the pain matrix operations, resulting in a potentially more adapted treatment of patients suffering from chronic pain. A better understanding of pain processing will be of tremendous importance for the scientific and clinical fields.