An Anterior Cingulate Cortex-to-Midbrain Projection Controls Chronic Itch in Mice

Ting-Ting Zhang ¹Su-Shan Guo ²Hui-Ying Wang ¹Qi Jing ¹Xin Yi ²Zi-Han Hu ¹Xin-Ren Yu ¹Tian-Le Xu ³Ming-Gang Liu ³Xuan Zhao¹

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作者信息

1. Department of Anesthesiology,Shanghai Tenth People's Hospital,School of Medicine,Tongji University,Shanghai 200072,China
2. Department of Anatomy and Physiology,Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine,Shanghai 200025,China
3. Department of Anatomy and Physiology,Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine,Shanghai 200025,China;Center for Brain Science of Shanghai Children's Medical Center,Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine,Shanghai 200127,China
折叠

Abstract

Itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch.While acute itch serves as a protec-tive system to warn the body of external irritating agents,chronic itch is a debilitating but poorly-treated clinical dis-ease leading to repetitive scratching and skin lesions.How-ever,the neural mechanisms underlying the pathophysiol-ogy of chronic itch remain mysterious.Here,we identified a cell type-dependent role of the anterior cingulate cortex(ACC)in controlling chronic itch-related excessive scratch-ing behaviors in mice.Moreover,we delineated a neural circuit originating from excitatory neurons of the ACC to the ventral tegmental area(VTA)that was critically involved in chronic itch.Furthermore,we demonstrate that the ACCĺVTA circuit also selectively modulated histaminergic acute itch.Finally,the ACC neurons were shown to predomi-nantly innervate the non-dopaminergic neurons of the VTA.Taken together,our findings uncover a cortex-midbrain cir-cuit for chronic itch-evoked scratching behaviors and shed novel insights on therapeutic intervention.

Key words

Anterior cingulate cortex/Chronic itch/Ventral tegmental area/Chemogenetics/Neural circuit

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基金项目

National Natural Science Foundation of China(81873787)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(81961128024)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(32170994)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(82201362)

Shanghai Natural Science Foundation(18ZR1424800)

Shanghai Natural Science Foundation(20ZR1430000)

Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project(2018SHZDZX05)

innovative research team of highlevel local universities in Shanghai()

出版年

2023

神经科学通报(英文版)

中国科学院上海生命科学研究院

神经科学通报(英文版)

CSTPCDCSCD

影响因子：0.741

ISSN：1673-7067

参考文献量67

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