A major unresolved issue in treating pain is the paradoxical hyperalgesia produced by the
gold-standard analgesic morphine and other opiates. We found that hyperalgesia-inducing
treatment with morphine resulted in downregulation of the K+-Cl− co-transporter KCC2 …

Measuring protein interactions is key to understanding cell signaling mechanisms, but
quantitative analysis of these interactions in situ has remained a major challenge. Here, we
present spatial intensity distribution analysis (SpIDA), an analysis technique for image data …

Local inhibitory interneurons in the dorsal horn play an important role in the control of
excitability at the segmental level and thus determine how nociceptive information is relayed
to higher structures. Regulation of inhibitory interneuron activity may therefore have critical …

In this study, we investigated postnatal changes in Rexed's laminae and distribution of
nociceptive afferents in the dorsal horn of the rat lumbar spinal cord at postnatal days 0, 5,
10, 15, 20, and 60. Transverse sections of the L4–L5 segments were processed for triple …

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating motoneuronal degenerative disease,
which is inevitably fatal in adults. ALS is characterized by an extensive loss of motoneurons
in the cerebrospinal axis, except for those motoneurons that control eye movements and …

Inhibitory interneurons are an important component of dorsal horn circuitry where they serve
to modulate spinal nociception. There is now considerable evidence indicating that reduced
inhibition in the spinal dorsal horn contributes to neuropathic pain. A loss of these inhibitory …

Whereas both GABA A receptors (GABA A Rs) and glycine receptors (GlyRs) play a role in
control of dorsal horn neuron excitability, their relative contribution to inhibition of small
diameter primary afferent terminals remains controversial. To address this, we designed an …

Premotor inhibitory neurons responsible for the decrease in the firing discharge during fast
or slow eye movements selectively target the cell bodies and the dendrites of abducens
motoneurons. γ‐Aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glycine, the main inhibitory synaptic …

In the present study, an optimized Transmission Electron Microscopy Color Imaging (TEMCI)
procedure was used to map and quantify the pathways involved in the trafficking and
subcellular targeting of gephyrin in identified abducens motoneurons. Gephyrin is a …

Neuronal inhibition mediated by GABAA receptors constrains nociceptive processing in the
spinal cord, and loss of GABAergic inhibition can produce allodynia and hyperalgesia.
Extrasynaptic α5 subunit‐containing GABAA receptors (α5GABAARs) generate a tonic …