Distinct nociresponsive region in mouse primary somatosensory cortex

Nociception, somatic discriminative aspects of pain, is represented in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), as is touch, but the separation and the interaction of the two modalities within S1 remain unclear. Here, we show the spatially-distinct tactile and nociceptive processing in the granular barrel field (BF) and the adjacent dysgranular region (Dys) in mouse S1. Simultaneous recording of the multiunit activity across subregions reveals that Dys responses are selective to noxious input whereas those of BF are to tactile input. At the single neuron level, nociceptive information is represented separately from the tactile information in Dys layer 2/3. In contrast, both modalities are converged in a layer 5 neuron in each region. Interestingly, the two modalities interfere with each other in both regions. We further demonstrate that Dys, but not BF, activity is critically involved in neuropathic pain and pain behavior, and thus provide evidence that Dys is a center specialized for nociception in S1.