医学创新论坛（第一期）

讲嘉宾: Zhou-Feng Chen（陈宙峰）, Ph.D.

主持人：梅林 Ph.D.

时间：2023年4月12日，星期三，10:00-11:30 AM

地点: 首都医科大学第二教学楼78教室

摘要：

Our sense of touch comprises discriminative (e.g., shape, pressure, and texture) and affective social touch. Pleasant touch (e.g., hugging, licking, or massaging) subserves a plethora of functions, including soothing, pain-alleviating, sleep-promoting, social bonding, and attachment. How discrete sensory modalities such as pleasant touch are encoded and transmitted from the skin to the brain is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Based on our recent work, I propose the framework in which somatosensory modalities with slow kinetics are encoded by modality-specific neuropeptides in sensory neurons and conveyed to the spinal microcircuits defined by respective GPCRs. In this talk, I will discuss our recent discovery of pleasant touch-specific neuropeptides and neural circuits. The potential clinical implications of our findings and future directions will also be discussed.

Reference

Liu BL, Qiao L, Liu K, Liu J, Tyler PA and Chen ZF. Molecular and neural basis of pleasant touch sensation. Science 2022 376(6592):483-491.