Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Regional Partnership Program - Saskatchewan

Our research has enabled us to watch for the first time the activation of the nerve fibres that are responsible for the pain experienced during migraine headache. Migraine is an intensely painful neurological condition that affects up to one fifth of the general population. Understanding migraine pain is a very challenging problem and thus, despite its widespread occurrence, the cause of migraine remains unknown. Pain sensitivity within the skull does not arise from the brain itself, but in fact is restricted to the membranous coverings of the brain called meninges. Pain fibres densely innervate the brain's meninges and abnormal activation of these fibres is considered a central component for the origin of migraine pain. We have developed a new experimental rodent preparation that maintains the membrane coverings of the brain together with the skull intact and allows the use of microscopy to observe the activation of individual pain fibres during pharmacological, electrical, and light manipulations. The objective of our research is to gain insight into the mechanisms of pain fibre signaling to better understand the neurological pain processes that occur during migraine. It is our hope that this will lead to new drug targets and better therapeutic treatments for this devastating illness.