Abstract
Chronic pain (CP) is a condition with a large repertory of clinical signs and symptoms with diverse expressions. Though widely analyzed, an appraisal at the level of single neuron and neuronal networks in CP is however missing. The present research proposes an empirical and theoretic framework which identifies a complex network correlate nested in the somatosensory thalamocortical (TC) circuit in diverse CP models. In vivo simultaneous extracellular neuronal electrophysiological high-density recordings have been performed from the TC circuit in rats. Wide functional network statistics neatly discriminated CP from control animals identifying collective dynamical traits. In particular, a collapsed functional connectivity and an altered modular architecture of the thalamocortical circuit have been evidenced. These results envisage CP as a functional connectivity disorder and give the clue for unveiling innovative therapeutic strategies.
Highlights
Evaluating the functional connections and computing sets of topological measures on the resulting graphs from both spiking activity and the Local Field Potentials (LFP)
We used a total of 52 Sprague-Dawley rats grouped as follow: 12 for the Seltzer model (SL), 12 for the Bennett-Xie model (SC), 14 for the peripheral inflammatory model (PI) and 14 for control (CR)
In such windows we assessed the extent of functional interactions separately for spiking and LFP signals, and subsequently we extracted a set of coherent complex network features
Summary
Evaluating the functional connections and computing sets of topological measures on the resulting graphs from both spiking activity and the Local Field Potentials (LFP). On the graphs constituted by the sets of the inferred functional connections (separately spiking activity and LFP), we applied a group of common topological measures contained in a general purpose framework.
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