• Zhengyu Cui, Zhongzhao Guo, Luyao Wei, Xiang Zou, Zilu Zhu, Yuchen Liu, Jie Wang, Liang Chen, Deheng Wang, and Zunji Ke.
• Academy of Integrative Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China.
• Pain. 2022 Nov 1; 163 (11): 213821532138-2153.

AbstractChronic pain is highly prevalent. Individuals with cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer disease are a susceptible population in which pain is frequently difficult to diagnosis. It is still unclear whether the pathological changes in patients with Alzheimer disease will affect pain processing. Here, we leverage animal behavior, neural activity recording, optogenetics, chemogenetics, and Alzheimer disease modeling to examine the contribution of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) neurons to pain response. The 5× familial Alzheimer disease mice show alleviated mechanical allodynia which can be regained by the genetic activation of ACC excitatory neurons. Furthermore, the lower peak neuronal excitation, delayed response initiation, as well as the dendritic spine reduction of ACC pyramidal neurons in 5×familial Alzheimer disease mice can be mimicked by Rac1 or actin polymerization inhibitor in wild-type (WT) mice. These findings indicate that abnormal of pain sensitivity in Alzheimer disease modeling mice is closely related to the variation of neuronal activity and dendritic spine loss in ACC pyramidal neurons, suggesting the crucial role of dendritic spine density in pain processing.Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

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