Grant: Project Grant

Patients who have suffered peripheral tissue or nerve injury, including trauma and cancer, often experience a combination of chronic pain, fear and anxiety. Chronic pain, fear and anxiety can happen rapidly after the injury and may persist for months or even years. Effective clinical prevention and treatment are not available as a result of our poor understanding of the molecular and synaptic mechanisms involved in these processes at the cortical level. In this proposal, we plan to use both in vitro brain slices and in vivo animals to investigate the long-lasting changes in the insular cortex (IC) after nerve injury. We plan to characterize the basic synaptic mechanisms of the IC and determine the synaptic and molecular mechanisms for injury-related synaptic plasticity. This information will provide a potential neuronal basis for the understanding and comprehensive treatment of chronic pain caused by injury.