Abstract
Sex differences in certain types of pain sensitivity and emotional responses have been previously reported. Synaptic plasticity is a key cellular mechanism for pain perception and emotional regulation, including long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). However, it is unclear whether there is a sex difference at synaptic level. Recent studies indicate that excitatory transmission and plasticity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are critical in chronic pain and pain related emotional responses. In the present study, we used 64-channel multielectrode (MED64) system to record synaptic plasticity in the ACC of male and female adult mice. We found that there was no significant difference in theta-burst stimulation (TBS)-induced LTP between female and male mice. Furthermore, the recruitment of inactive channels was also not different. For LTD, we found that LTD was greater in slices of ACC in male mice than female mice. Our results demonstrate that LTP in the ACC does not show any sex-related difference.
Highlights
Sex difference in responses to acute and chronic pain have been reported in both animal and human studies
long-term potentiation (LTP) induced by theta-burst stimulation (TBS) in the Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of female mice LTP plays an important role in cortical excitation in chronic pain [8, 18, 19]
For long-term depression (LTD), we found that in comparison with female ACC, the number of channels with LTD was significantly higher in male mice than that in female mice
Summary
Sex difference in responses to acute and chronic pain have been reported in both animal and human studies. Recent animal studies have found that female animals showed greater behavioral nociceptive responses to peripheral injury [4, 5]. In the formalin pain model, female mice showed prolonged licking response during late phase of nociceptive response (55–120 min after injection). There are previous reports that showed less sex difference for acute and chronic pain [6, 7]. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a critical cortical region for pain perception and pain-related emotion [8,9,10]. The generation and maintenance of chronic pain and pain-related emotions are accompanied by long-term
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