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Nerve cell memory holds key erasing pain
Wednesday February 15, 2012 09:55:29 AM,
IANS
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Toronto: Researchers
have found the key to how memories of pain are stored in the
brain, especially in nerve cells (neurons), and how they can be
erased to ease pain.
The central nervous system is known to "remember" painful
experiences, that they leave a memory trace of pain.
And when there is new sensory input, the pain memory trace in the
brain magnifies the feeling so that even a gentle touch can be
excruciating.
"Perhaps the best example of a pain memory trace is found with
phantom limb pain," suggests McGill University neuroscientist
Terence Coderre.
"Patients may have a limb amputated because of gangrene, the
patients continue to feel they are suffering from pain in the
absent limb," he said, according to a McGill statement.
Recent work has shown that the protein kinase PKMzeta plays a
crucial role in building and maintaining memory by strengthening
the connections between neurons (nerve cells).
Now Coderre and his colleagues have discovered that PKMzeta is
also the key to understanding how the memory of pain is stored in
the neurons. They were able to show that after painful
stimulation, the level of PKMzeta increases persistently in the
central nervous system (CNS).
Even more importantly, the researchers found that by blocking the
activity of PKMzeta at the neuronal level reverses the
hypersensitivity to pain that neurons develop after irritating the
skin by applying capsaicin -- the active ingredient in hot
peppers.
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