Abstract
Besides chronic stress, chronic pain is one of the prevalent determinants for depression. Indeed, around 50% of chronic pain patients develop mood disorders. Alterations in brain regions implicated in pain processing may also be involved in affective processing, thus potentially be responsible of mood disorders. However, the underlying mechanisms of this comorbidity are not yet elucidated. Here, we studied the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in the somatosensory, aversive and anxiodepressive consequences of neuropathic pain. We showed that a permanent lesion or temporal inhibition of ACC pyramidal neurons blocked the development or suppressed the expression of an anxiodepressive phenotype in neuropathic mice. In addition, anxiodepressive-like behavior coincided with ACC hyperactivity. In conclusion we show that the ACC is a critical hub for neuropathic pain-induced depression.
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