Electroacupuncture Treatment Alleviates the Remifentanil-Induced Hyperalgesia by Regulating the Activities of the Ventral Posterior Lateral Nucleus of the Thalamus Neurons in Rats

Figure 7

Effects of 2 Hz-EA treatment on the spontaneous neuronal activity of VPL neurons in rats that received RF infusion. (a) Representative spontaneous activity of VPL neurons before and after RF infusion in the EA- and mock EA-treated rats. Upper: representative traces of the neuronal discharges. Scale bar: 400 μV, 10 sec. Middle: scatter plot of the spikes. Lower: histograms show the number of action potentials (spikes) per second (bin width, 2 seconds). (b) Cluster plot depicting activity of VPL neurons (rows) before and after RF infusion in the EA- and mock EA-treated rats are shown. Warm and cool colors indicate the increase and decrease, respectively, in the spikes of multichannel recorded neurons. (c) Averaged spontaneous activity of VPL neurons (spikes per second) before and after RF infusion in EA- and mock EA-treated rats. versus the corresponding mock EA group, two-way ANOVA followed by the Bonferroni post hoc test, to 24 cells (four to five rats) per group.

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