AMED

We have been conducting collaborative research on pain in the insular cortex with Professor Koichi Iwata (Department of Physiology). We hypothesized that trigeminal nerve damage causes intractable neuropathic pain by increasing neuronal activities for a long period, thereby inducing plastic changes not only in peripheral nerves but also in secondary neurons and neural circuits in the cerebral cortex. Furthermore, this increase in activity forms a 'negative spiral' that induces plastic changes in neural circuits. This research is being conducted as part of the AMED "Research Project for Elucidating Chronic Pain" in 2017-2019, titled Construction of a New Prevention and Treatment System for Trigeminal Neuropathic Pain.