The breathing center and core neurons have projects to them. Brain scientists have found that the two are related.
The institute is called the Salk Institute.
People breathe faster when they feel pain. Their breathing slows when they take an opiate. respiration can stop if they overdose.
A team of scientists has discovered a brain circuit in mice that may explain how opioids affect both pain and breathing.
The team found evidence that it's possible to separate the effects of pain drugs and not affect respiration.
If the finding holds up in people, it's possible that we can develop safer analgesics, according to the study's lead author.
Kevin Yackle, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, was not involved in the study.
Breathing and pain are related.
The connection between breathing rhythm and the experience of pain and anxiety has been known for hundreds of years.
Labor pains are associated with breathing problems. Scary experiences cause faster respiration.
Han demonstrated the connection while taking a shower.
He says that the cold water covered his entire body after he forgot to change the temperature. I was breathing fast.
Han thinks he knows why.
Han and a team of researchers identified two populations of neurons in the same area of the brainstem in mice.
Han says one population regulates breathing and the other regulates pain. He says that a painful experience can increase a person's breathing rate.
There are safer ways to alleviate pain.
Practical implications of the finding are that both groups of brain cells respond to opioids.
The research shows that an overdose of an opiate can be fatal because it shuts down the brain's dopaminergic system.
Scientists didn't know that the neurons that respond to pain interacted with the ones that don't.
The brain circuits involved in breathing are new to Yackle.
It should be possible to develop drugs that don't affect the brain cells that keep us alive if people also have separate populations of pain and breathing neurons.
Yackle says the new study could point the way to better drugs to revive someone who has overdosed.
Yackle says that the only way is to give someone an opiate blocker.
The drug Narcan is effective at restoring normal breathing. It can cause withdrawal symptoms, which can lead to more drug taking and another overdose.
Yackle says a drug that only restored breathing would be a better option.
"Opioids are the best pain killers," Yackle says. It's important to find a way to maintain their capacity as an analgesic yet get rid of the negative side effects.
