Search

BackgroundBesides the established role of dopamine neurons and projections in nociceptive stimuli, the involvement of ventral tegmental area (VTA) glutamatergic projections to nucleus accumbens (NAc) in pain remains unknown. In the present study, we aimed to examine the role of VTA glutamatergic projections to NAc in painful stimuli and its related behavioral changes.MethodsUnilateral chronic constrictive injury (CCI) of sciatic nerve or intraplantar hind paw injections (i.pl.) of complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA) were used to develop pathological pain models in wild-type and VGluT2-Cre mice. The involvement of VTA glutamatergic neurons with projections to NAc in CCI-induced pain model was noted by c-Fos labeling and firing rate recordings. Pain response and pain-related behavior changes to the artificial manipulation of the VTA glutamatergic projections to NAc were observed by Hargreaves tests, von Frey tests, open field tests, elevated maze tests, and sucrose preference tests.ResultsGlutamatergic neurons in VTA had efferent inputs to shell area of the NAc. The CCI pain model significantly increased neuronal activity and firing rate in VTA glutamate neurons with projections to NAc. The photoinhibition of these glutamatergic projections relieved CCI-induced neuropathic pain and CFA-induced acute and chronic inflammatory pain. Moreover, pathological neuropathic pain-induced anxiety and less sucrose preference were also relieved by inhibiting the VTA glutamatergic projections to NAc.ConclusionTogether, glutamatergic inputs from VTA to NAc contribute to chronic neuropathic and inflammatory pain and pain-related anxiety and depressive behaviors, providing a mechanism for developing novel therapeutic methods.

We propose a symmetry of $T\bar T$ deformed 2D CFT, which preserves the trace relation. The deformed conformal killing equation is obtained. Once we consider the background metric runs with the deformation parameter $\mu$, the deformation contributes an additional term in conformal killing equation, which plays the role of renormalization group flow of metric. The conformal symmetry coincides with the fixed point. On the gravity side, this deformed conformal killing equation can be described by a new boundary condition of AdS$_3$. In addition, based on the deformed conformal killing equation, we derive that the stress tensor of the deformed CFT equals to Brown-York's quasilocal stress tensor on a finite boundary with a counterterm. For a specific example, BTZ black hole, we get $T\bar T$ deformed conformal killing vectors and the associated conserved charges are also studied., Comment: 27 pages, revised version to appear in Nuclear Physics B

In this note we compute mutual information between two intervals in CFTs dual to extremal BTZ (UV CFT) and near horizon limit of extremal BTZ (IR CFT) using the replica technique in some limiting regimes, which can be compared with holographic description.

We studied holographic insulator/superconductor phase transition in the framework of Born-Infeld electrodynamics both numerically and analytically. First we numerically study the effects of the Born-Infeld electrodynamics on the phase transition, find that the critical chemical potential is not changed by the Born-Infeld parameter. Then we employ the variational method for the Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem to analytically study the phase transition. The analytical results obtained are found to be consistent with the numerical results., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures typos fixed

We consider the backreaction of the fundamental flavor degrees of freedom on the AdS$_5$-Schwarz background, and calculate their contributions to the shear viscosity and jet-quenching parameter of the thermal quark-gluon plasma., Comment: 5 pages, minor changes and references added

Using gauge theory/string duality, we calculated the jet quenching parameter $\hat{q}$ of the Sakai-Sugimoto model in various phases. Being different from the $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM theory where $\hat{q}\propto T^3$, we find that $\hat{q}\propto T^4/T_d$, where $T_d$ is the critical temperature of the confined/deconfined phase transition. By analyzing the $\hat{q}$ in different phases of this theory, we get better understanding about some statements in previous works, such as the non-universality and the explanation of discrepancies between the theory predictions and experiments., Comment: some errors are corrected and part of the original conclusions are revised

We ask if the conventional variable separation techniques in the studying of standard cosmology and the collapsing of extremely dense stars introduce Newton's absolute space-time concepts. If this is the case, then a completely relative cosmology is needed. We build the basic frame-works for such a cosmology and illustrate that, the observed luminosity-distance v.s. red-shift relations of supernovaes can be explained naturally even without any conception of dark energies., Comment: 4 and half pages, 1 figures, two column styles

This is a second paper of a series of two. In this paper, we directly correct the problem pointed out in the first paper of this series, dark energy does not cluster on the scale of galaxy clusters, but the current describing the flowing of dark energies outside the clusters is ignored in almost all the previous papers. We set up and solve a first order differential equation which describes the evolution of the clusters in a back ground universe containing dark energies. From the solution we extract the key parameters of the model and find them depending on the equation of state coefficients of dark energies rather non-trivially. We then apply the results in Press-Scheter theory and calculate the number density of galaxy clusters and its evolutions, we find the observable quantities are strongly affected by the equation of state coefficients of dark energies., Comment: comparing with previous works is added, some errors are corrected

We point out that $��$CDM cosmology has an ignored assumption. That is, the $��$ component of the universe moves synchronously with ordinary matters on Hubble scales. If cosmological constant is vacuum energy, this assumption may be very difficult to be understood. We then propose a new mechanism which can explain the accelerating recession of super-novaes. That is, considering the pressures originating from the random moving (including Hubble recession) of galaxy clusters and galaxies. We provide an new analytical solution of Einstein equation which may describe a universe whose pressures originating from the random moving of galaxy clusters and galaxies are considered., two column style, 4 pages

In numerical calculations of the primordial power spectrum of perturbations produced during inflation, for very little wavenumber $k$s, to implement the initial conditions required of the perturbation mode functions consistently, we must let the universe experience more e-foldings of inflation than that required of it to solve the horizon, flatness and other pre-inflation problems. However, if the number of e-foldings of inflation has an upper bound, then for perturbations at scales greater than some critical value, the initial conditions required of the mode functions cannot be implemented physically. Because at the inflation beginning point, these perturbation modes lie outside the horizon. We propose that such perturbations do not contribute to the Cosmological Microwave Background Anisotropy (CMBA). Under this proposition, the exceptional lowness of the observed little $l$ muli-poles of CMBA is reproduced numerically. In Linde's $\phi^2$ model, the upper bound on the number of e-foldings of inflation is determined to be 65 approximately., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We studied the spherical collapse model in the flat $\Lambda$CDM cosmology and provided exact and analytical formulaes for the calculation of the two important parameters in the application of Press-Schechter theory, the critical density contrast and the ratio of cluster/background densities at the virialization point in terms of a media variable which can be solved precisely by numerical methods., Comment: part of the numerical results changed, two typoes corrected

We argue that the large N strong/weak phase transition is a generic phenomenon in a finite temperature supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory of maximal supersymmetry. ${\cal N}=4$, D=4 SYM is the canonical example, where we also argue that the large N Hawking-Page phase transition disappears for a sufficiently small coupling. The Hawking-Page transition temperature is lowered by the first $\ap$ correction. Physically, the strong/weak phase transition is identified with the correspondence point of Horowitz and Polchinski. We also try to construct toy models to demonstrate the large N phase transitions, with limited success., Comment: 15 pages, harvmac. Minor errors corrected, argument in sect. 3 improved