Basic  Science | Translational  Research | Clinical  Research

Sex and pain
Recent studies indicate that neural mechanisms of pain and analgesia differ in males and females. Inherent sex differences in neural function related to pain make women more likely to develop deep tissue orofacial and visceral persistent pain. These new findings will help target future therapies based on sex and gender.
Joel Greenspan, Richard Traub

Gonadal steroids and pain
Gonadal hormones play an important role in pain arising from the viscera. Women are more prone to irritable bowel syndrome than men and symptoms fluctuate with the menstrual cycle. Studies are examining the role of estrogen and progesterone on visceral sensitivity and their possible interaction with excitatory amino acids and their receptors. These experiments will lead to new approaches to attenuating persistent visceral pain and irritable bowel disease.
Richard Traub

Nociceptors and ion channels
Unique properties of peripheral sensory neurons that innervate specific structures, such as the colon, jaw muscles, and the temporomandibular joint, have been identified and likely contribute to persistent pain conditions. Novel therapeutic targets based on regionally selective cellular and molecular mechanisms in sensory neurons will lead to improvements in pain management.
Michael Gold, Dean Dessem

Excitatory amino acid receptors and pain
Persistent activation of excitatory amino acid receptors in nociceptive pathways leads to increases in synaptic strength and enhances responses to subsequent nonpainful and painful stimuli. Novel receptor antagonists and inhibitors of signal transduction will lead to improved approaches to attenuating pain and hyperalgesia after injury without disturbing normal pain responses.
Guan Bai, Ronald Dubner, Ke Ren, Feng Wei

Neonatal pain
Recent studies indicate that neonatal pain can lead to alterations in pain processing in the adult. These findings stress the importance of developing noninvasive and robust analgesic approaches in the neonate subject to injury and pain.
Ronald Dubner, Michael Gold, Michael Lidow, Ke Ren, Richard Traub

Proinflammatory cytokines
Proinflammatory cytokines are associated with responses of the nervous system to tissue or nerve injury. The cytokine cascade and its role in immune and neural function is an important contributor to the development of persistent pain states. These studies examine the contribution of peripheral and central nervous system cytokine pathways to orofacial pain. The findings will lead to the development of anti-inflammatory cytokines or their analogs as analgesic agents.
Ke Ren, Ronald Dubner

Muscle pain
Persistent craniofacial muscle pain is a significant clinical program that affects millions of Americans and leads to health care costs in the billions of dollars. The underlying pathology of these conditions is poorly understood due in part to the lack of appropriate experimental models to study mechanisms and new treatment approaches. These studies will provide effective animals models for understanding mechanisms and testing the efficacy of new analgesic agents.
Norman Capra, Jin Ro

Descending sensory modulation
Tissue and nerve injury lead to an increase in the CNS descending modulation of pain transmission to higher brain centers. The changes are dynamic with descending excitation or inhibition dominating depending on the type of injury. The changes involve increased activation of excitatory amino acid and opioid receptors. The development of strategies to alter descending modulation after injury will provide more effective treatments of deep tissue persistent pain.
Ronald Dubner, Ke Ren, Feng Wei

Craniofacial dysfunction and pain
The muscles of mastication and the temporomandibular joint are prominently involved in mechanisms of persistent orofacial pain. These conditions impact on patterns of jaw movement, which are altered by the presence of pain. Tongue movements are also altered by pain leading to disordered speech, dental anomalies and changes in respiration and swallowing. An understanding of oral and craniofacial motor function and the influence of pain are important in order to develop treatment approaches that restore normal jaw relationships.
Norman Capra, Jin Ro

Communication between immune and nervous systems
Neural-inflammatory interactions play a prominent role in the pathophysiology of complex diseases such as bronchial asthma. Therefore, understanding how the immune and nervous systems communicate with each other at the cellular level will provide new strategies for developing novel therapeutic approaches to a myriad of hypersensitivity and inflammatory diseases.
Daniel Weinreich

Neural networks in the mammalian olfactory system
All biological systems share common mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels yet exhibit tremendous diversity of organization and function. This diversity arises at the level of cell-cell communication. The most complex degree of cell-cell communication is in the nervous system. This complexity is expressed in the brain at the level of neural networks. Neural networks are the unique, defining characteristic of the nervous system. Understanding the organization, function and development of neural networks in the mammalian olfactory system is the center of this research. In vivo recording methods are used to understand how cell-cell communication and neural networks are involved in the neural computation of odorants.
Michael Shipley

CNS control of reproductive function
The CNS control of reproductive function has currently evolved into studying the processing of excitatory stimuli to the neurons that contain luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH or gonadotropin releasing hormone, GnRH) and trigger ovulation. Neuronal phenotype changes induced by the suckling stimulus in the prolactin regulatory neurons during lactation are also addressed, using new quantitative non-radioactive in situ hybridization methods. A separate but related direction of this research also focuses on the consequences of ovarian function on the injured brain. These studies examine the role that ovarian hormones play in pain, seizure-induced brain damage, and neuronal damage induced by CNS inflammatory disease experimental allergic encephalitis.
Gloria Hoffman