Table 1.
Experimental outline for testing VZV pain.
| Experiment | Question | Experimental groups | Experimental tests | Number of animals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experiment #1: Inject trigeminal ganglia with VZV | Does VZV induce pain without damage to the terminals of the sensory neurons? | Control (TG infusion) | Affective pain | 11 | |||
| VZV (TG infusion) | Affective pain | 17 | |||||
| Experiment #2: VPM/VPL infusion with DREADD and whisker pad injection with VZV | Can neuronal inhibition in the VPM/VPL reduce orofacial affective pain? | Whisker pad injection | IP injection | 4–5 | |||
| Control | Vehicle | Affective pain | 4–5 | ||||
| Control | CNO | Affective pain | 4–5 | ||||
| VZV | Vehicle | Affective pain | 4–5 | ||||
| VZV | CNO* | Affective pain | 4–5 | ||||
| Experiment #3: VPM/VPL infusion with DREADD and whisker pad injection with VZV | Can neuronal inhibition in the VPM/VPL reduce neuronal activity in the VPM/VPL and alter activity in the ACC? | Whisker pad injection | IP injection | ||||
| Control | Vehicle | LFP | ICC | 7 | 3 | ||
| Control | CNO | LFP | ICC | 7 | 3 | ||
| VZV | Vehicle | LFP | ICC | 7 | 4 | ||
| VZV | CNO | LFP | ICC | 7 | 4 | ||
Abbreviations: VZV, varicella zoster virus; CNO, clozapine-n-oxide; LFP, local field potentials; IP, intraperitoneal injection; ICC, immunocytochemistry. *All animals in Experiment #2 and Experiment #3 had designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drug (DREADD) infused into the ventral posterior medial/posterior lateral thalamus but there was a VZV injected group that received CNO and did not have the DREADD construct infused, shown in Supplementary Figure S3.