Pain conditions occur at an increasing rate alongside people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and can include chronic headaches, migraines, and neuropathic pain. In order to begin to understand the concurrence, this experiment aimed to investigate the effect of long-term amygdala kindling, a model of TLE, on the affective and nociceptive components of pain in rats. Formalin-induced affective avoidance was investigated using the conditioned place aversion (CPA) test and found aversion in kindled, but not sham rats. Nociceptive behaviours were observed using the formalin test and found a peripheral reduction of pain, that persisted one-week following the last stimulation in kindled rats. Lower activation of c-Fos in the periaqueductal gray was seen in kindled rats, while no changes in protein kinase C δ activation was found. Amygdala kindling contributed to pain sensitivity changes that persisted into the interictal period, and male and female pain trends were found, requiring further investigation.
Author Keywords: affective pain, amygdala, amygdala kindling, formalin, nociceptive pain, periaqueductal gray