Pain & Itch: The good, the bad, & the ugly

28th March 2024

Timing : 1 pm EST

Please use this zoom link for joining the webinar

For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series Spring'24, see here


Pain and itch protect us from potential injury and diseases from our immediate surroundings. However, pain and itch lose their protective purpose in chronic disorders such as peripheral neuropathy and psoriasis. Moreover, patients with these chronic disorders often suffer from stress and anxiety, which in turn can make the pain and itch worse. In my talk, I will elaborate on two stories. First, we find a novel circuit mechanism for how the aversiveness associated with the itch is encoded in the brain. In the second one, we investigate how the mesolimbic dopaminergic system may mediate the severity of chronic neuropathic pain and associated anxiety. We employed fluorescent gene-carrying viral vectors to interrogate the anatomy, optogenetic/ chemogenetic tools to manipulate the activity, and record from the circuits of interest. Together, we shed light on the molecular, cellular, and circuit mechanisms that underlie the emotional distress caused by chronic pain and itch.



Snow
Dr. Arnab Barik
Assistant professor
India Alliance Intermediate Fellow
Centre for Neuroscience
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Arnab did his Ph.D. in Developmental Neurobiology from the Medical College of Georgia with Lin Mei, working on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying Neuromuscular junction development and maintenance. During his postdoc, Arnab worked with Alex Chesler at the NIH on the brain and spinal cord circuits for pain. In 2020, he joined the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, as an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Neuroscience to work on the neural circuits for pain and itch. Arnab is a DBT-Wellcome IndiaAlliance Fellow and IBRO Return Home Fellow.