Abstract
As pain consists of both sensory and affective components, its management by pharmaceutical agents remains difficult. Alternative forms of neuromodulation, such as electrical stimulation, have been studied in recent years as potential pain treatment options. Although electrical stimulation of the brain has shown promise, more research into stimulation frequency and targets is required to support its clinical applications. Here, we studied the effect that stimulation frequency has on pain modulation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in acute pain models in rats. We found that low-frequency stimulation in the prelimbic region of the PFC (PL-PFC) provides reduction of sensory and affective pain components. Meanwhile, high-frequency stimulation of the ACC, a region involved in processing pain affect, reduces pain aversive behaviors. Our results demonstrate that frequency-dependent neuromodulation of the PFC or ACC has the potential for pain modulation.
Highlights
Pain has sensory and affective components, making it difficult to be managed entirely by pharmaceutical treatments
We delivered our electrical stimulation at an intensity of 20 μA, as this intensity has been shown to be used safely in a previous experiment in which the PL-prefrontal cortices (PFC) was stimulated at low-frequencies to modulate acute thermal pain [47]
We examined the effect of electrical stimulation to the prelimbic region of the PFC (PL-PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for pain modulation in awake, freely moving rats
Summary
Pain has sensory and affective components, making it difficult to be managed entirely by pharmaceutical treatments. Non-pharmaceutical methods of pain relief, in the form of neuromodulation, can play an important role in the dual epidemic of chronic pain and opioid addiction. Previous animal and clinical imaging studies have demonstrated synaptic changes in the PFC during acute and chronic pain states [12,13,14,15,16,17,18], and stimulation of components of the PFC can increase the latency of withdrawal and reduce aversive responses to noxious stimuli [19,20,21,22,23]. The ACC, is involved in the processing of the affective, or aversive, component of pain [24,25,26,27,28]
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