Oxytocin Effects on Pain Perception and Pain Anticipation

Searching for new analgesics there is an ongoing debate whether the hypothalamic neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has a modulatory effect on pain processing. Strong evidence for an analgesic property of OT comes from rodents, where OT was shown to act in several regions of the pain matrix with the ventral striatum (VS) being identified as a main target region of antinoiceptive OT effects 14, 44. OT may also exert effects on pain anticipation since a specific subpopulation of OT neurons was found to be activated during pain anticipation in rodents (V.

Source: The Journal of Pain - April 18, 2019 Category: Materials Science Authors: Sabine C. Herpertz, Mike M. Schmitgen, Christine Fuchs, Corinna Roth, Robert Christian Wolf, Katja Bertsch, Herta Flor, Valery Grinevich, Sabrina Boll Source Type: research