Little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of the principal sensory nucleus (PrV) of the trigeminal nerve, a major relay station for somatotopic pattern formation in the trigeminal system. Here, we show that mice lacking Drg11, a homeodomain transcription factor, exhibit defects within the PrV, which include an aberrant distribution of Drg11-/- cells, altered expres...

The expression patterns of the three CaM genes were quantitatively localized by using in situ hybridization techniques to detect gene-specific [35S]-labeled cRNA probes complementary to the multiple CaM mRNAs in the trigeminal nuclei of the adult rat brain. The three distinct CaM genes were widely expressed throughout the midbrain-brain stem area with moderate intensities. In general, mRNAs tra...

Trigeminal primary afferent fibers have small receptive fields and discrete submodalities, but second order trigeminal neurons often display larger receptive fields with complex, multimodal responses. Moreover, while most large caliber afferents terminate exclusively in the principal trigeminal nucleus, and pars caudalis (sVc) of the spinal trigeminal nucleus receives almost exclusively small c...

BACKGROUND We previously developed a rat trigeminal motor neuron axotomy model involving masseter and temporal muscle resection to study pathological changes of the central nucleus after peripheral nerve injury caused by oral surgery. Because motor neurons are reported to be more vulnerable to axotomy in mice than rats, we compared the degeneration process of the trigeminal motor nucleus in the...

The purpose of this study was to identify clinical predictors and anatomical structures involved in patients with pain after dorsolateral medullary infarction. Eight out of 12 patients (67%) developed poststroke pain within 12 days to 24 months after infarction. The pain occurred in the ipsilateral face (6 patients) and/or the contralateral limbs and trunk (5 patients, 3 of whom also had facial...

Several lines of evidence suggest that the hypothalamus is involved in trigeminal pain processing. However, the organization of descending hypothalamic projections to the spinal trigeminal nucleus caudalis (Sp5C) remains poorly understood. Microinjections of the retrograde tracer, fluorogold (FG), into the Sp5C, in rats, reveal that five hypothalamic nuclei project to the Sp5C: the paraventricu...

Somatic tinnitus is clinically observed modulation of the pitch and loudness of tinnitus by somatic stimulation. This phenomenon and the association of tinnitus with somatic neural disorders indicate that neural connections between the somatosensory and auditory systems may play a role in tinnitus. Anatomical and physiological evidence supports these observations. The trigeminal and dorsal root...

Most migraine patients suffer from cutaneous allodynia; however, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) plays an important role in the pathophysiology of migraine, and it is therefore, a potential therapeutic target for treating the pain. In the present study, a rat model of conscious migraine, induced by repeated electrical stimulation of the superior sag...

L-type calcium channel blockers like verapamil are used in the prophylaxis of migraine. However, their effect on the expression of CGRP in the trigeminal nucleus caudalis (TNC) is unknown. It is important because an earlier study had shown that olcegepant, a CGRP receptor antagonist, acts at the level of the trigeminal spinal nucleus rather than the trigeminal ganglia. Nimodipine was used in th...

A region of the trigeminal complex located at the border of the subnucleus interpolaris and subnucleus caudalis receives not only trigeminal nerve inputs from the face, tongue and palate, but also afferent terminations from other nerves which innervate the oral cavity and upper airway. To increase our understanding of the types of sensory information relayed to this region of the trigeminal nuc...