Abstract
Effects of electrical stimulation of the periventricular gray matter and dorsal nucleus raphe in the midbrain on physiological pain induced by nociceptive stimulation (crushing the tail or skin of the limbs with forceps) and on pathological pain (a pain syndrome of spinal origin) were studied in experiments on albino rats. This last pain syndrome was produced by creating a generator of pathologically enhanced excitation in the posterior horns of the spinal cord with the aid of tetanus toxin, which disturbs various types of inhibition. Electrical stimulation of the above structure was shown to depress both physiological and pathological pain. It is concluded that analgesia during electrical stimulation of brain structures is connected not only with the strengthening of descending inhibition in the spinal cord, as in the case of physiological pain caused by peripheral nociceptive stimulation (as several workers have shown), but also with blocking the spread of excitation at the supraspinal level. This mechanism must play the decisive role in the production of analgesia in pain syndromes of central origin, including those arising under natural conditions.
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Laboratory of General Pathology of the Nervous System, Institute of General Pathology and Pathological Physiology, Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Moscow. Translated from Byulleten' Éksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 84, No. 7, pp. 16–19, July, 1977.
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Igon'kina, S.I., Kryzhanovskii, G.N. Analgesia on electrical stimulation of mesencephalic nuclei in rats with a pain syndrome of spinal origin. Bull Exp Biol Med 84, 936–939 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00798509
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00798509