• Di Mu, Juan Deng, Ke-Fei Liu, Zhen-Yu Wu, Yu-Feng Shi, Wei-Min Guo, Qun-Quan Mao, Xing-Jun Liu, Hui Li, and Yan-Gang Sun.
• Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-Yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China.
• Science. 2017 Aug 18; 357 (6352): 695-699.

AbstractAlthough itch sensation is an important protective mechanism for animals, chronic itch remains a challenging clinical problem. Itch processing has been studied extensively at the spinal level. However, how itch information is transmitted to the brain and what central circuits underlie the itch-induced scratching behavior remain largely unknown. We found that the spinoparabrachial pathway was activated during itch processing and that optogenetic suppression of this pathway impaired itch-induced scratching behaviors. Itch-mediating spinal neurons, which express the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor, are disynaptically connected to the parabrachial nucleus via glutamatergic spinal projection neurons. Blockade of synaptic output of glutamatergic neurons in the parabrachial nucleus suppressed pruritogen-induced scratching behavior. Thus, our studies reveal a central neural circuit that is critical for itch signal processing.Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

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