Previous studies in our laboratory have indicated that anesthetic block of neural activity at discrete sites within the limbic system, including the lateral hypothalamus and anterior cingulum bundle, causes a significant long-lasting analgesia during the formalin test. In this experiment, the local anesthetic lidocaine was microinjected into the dentate region of the hippocampus, an important limbic structure presumed to subserve the affective-motivational aspects of pain. The dentate gyrus is strategically situated at a point of convergence of widespread polysensory cortical input to the hippocampus, to allow modulation of cortical signals before they diverge into numerous limbic circuits. The results indicate that anesthetic block of the anterior region of the dentate gyrus produces analgesia in the rat during the formalin test. The analgesia produced by this procedure became apparent 30 minutes after regional block contralateral to the site of injury and persisted for the duration of the test period. These data provide further evidence that limbic forebrain structures are involved in pain and analgesia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.59653 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | McKenna, John E. (John Erwin) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001170248, proquestno: AAIMM66399, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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