Fig. 1: Pivotal role of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in spontaneous pain behaviors. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Pivotal role of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in spontaneous pain behaviors.

From: A distinct neuronal ensemble of prelimbic cortex mediates spontaneous pain in rats with peripheral inflammation

Fig. 1

a Spontaneous behaviors within 30-min recording sessions 0–14 days after CFA injection into left hindpaw plantar. n = 10 rats for 0, 1, 3, 14-day CFA groups, n = 8 rats for 7-day CFA group, n = 7 rats for 0, 1, 7, 14-day Sham group, n = 6 rats for 3-day Sham group. Two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc test. b Left: Schematic illustrating the relative positions of recording electrodes in pain-associated brain areas in rats with CFA injection. PL prelimbic cortex, IL infralimbic cortex, AcbC nucleus accumbens core, AcbSh nucleus accumbens shell, S1 primary somatosensory cortex, MD medial thalamus, dCA1 dorsal hippocampal CA1, BLA basolateral amygdala, CeA central amygdala, vCA1 ventral hippocampal CA1; refs, reference and ground wires in the cerebellum. Right: An example of simultaneous recordings of LFPs (band-pass filtered 0.5–100 Hz, upper) and behavioral signals (bottom) during a recording session. The diagram was created with BioRender.com. c Granger causality comparisons between the onsets and intermissions of spontaneous paw lifting behaviors between pairs of two recorded regions. The T-values (left) and P-values (right) were measured by the point-to-point two-sided paired t-tests across either two recorded regions. d Increased granger causality values of information flows from PL to other regions during periods with and without spontaneous paw lifting. Paired t-test. n = 22 recording sessions from 10 rats. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, Two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc test. e. Power spectrum density (PSD) comparisons between the onsets and intermissions of spontaneous paw lifting among ten brain regions. The T-values (left) and P-values (right) measured by the two-sided paired t-tests across the frequency. f Increased gamma band power (32–75 Hz) of the PL during spontaneous paw lifting compared to the intermissions. Red and blue lines showed the mean value of PSD during the presence and absence of spontaneous paw lifting, respectively. Shaded areas define ± SEM. Two-sided paired t-tests, black bar showed significant FDR corrected p values. Data for A, D were presented as mean values ± SEM. Source data for A and D were provided as a Source Data file.

Back to article page