Recording of electrophysiological activity from dorsal horn neurons in acute spinal cord slices with patch-clamp technique.
The main research interest of our department is to study mechanisms of pain and to explore new possibilities of pain treatment, especially in chronic states. Our experimental work is concentrated on the modulation of nociceptive information at the spinal cord level that is the relay center between the periphery and the higher brain areas. Our goal is to study these modulatory mechanisms in order to improve therapy for pain conditions, such as allodynia, hyperalgesia, neuropathic and cancer related pain. Our focus is on the role of TRPV1 receptors and inflammatory cytokines. In our research we use mainly electrophysiological, immunohistochemical and behavioral methods. In addition, we finalize another project directed towards the role of thyroid hormones (THs) and omega-3-polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 PUFA) in the physiology of cardiac and skeletal muscles. Models of hyper- and hypothyroid status are used to analyze potential influence of n-3 PUFA on the induced pathological changes.
An important approach in our research is recording of electrophysiological activity from dorsal horn neurons in acute spinal cord slices with patch-clamp technique. This method allows us recording of synaptic activity in the dorsal horn, where the nociceptive information between the peripheral and central nervous system is transmitted. The left image shows dorsal horn in spinal cord slice with a patch microelectrode at low magnification; on the right one a recorded neuron is visible under higher magnification.
For the study of cardiac and skeletal muscles histochemical and immunocytochemical staining of tissue sections is used. On the picture skeletal muscle sections stained for specific muscle proteins is shown enabling us quantitative analysis of different muscle fiber types (převzato z práce Soukup et al., Physiol Res 61: 575-586, 2012).
TRPV1 receptors are present on small diameter dorsal root ganglia neurons, that are involved in pain perception. Dorsal root ganglia neurons on histological slide stained for the presence of TRPV1 receptors (red) and parvalbumin (green).
