| NMDA Receptors, Wind-Up and the Gate Control Theory of Pain - a Mathematical Model (2007) | |||||||||||||
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| We present a mathematical model which is an extension of that of Britton and Skevington (1989) for the gate control theory of pain (Melzack and Wall, 1965, 1982). The variables of the model are the electric potentials of various cells in the midbrain and the spinal cord, such as T-cells and inhibitory and excitatory cells of the substantia gelatinosa (SG). The original model simulated many of the phenomena observed in acute pain in humans, but not that of wind-up (Mendell, 1966). In retrospect this is not surprising, as it did not include the NMDA receptors that are now recognised to be crucial to the phenomenon. Here we rectify this 2 N.F. Britton et al. omission, and obtain good agreement of the model with experimental data on windup. The positive feedback that NMDA receptors exhibit is shown to be the essential feature in producing wind-up. As an independent test of the model we simulate a completely different experimental set-up, and obtain good qualitative agreement with data ther... | |||||||||||||
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