Hildebrand Laboratory

The Hildebrand Laboratory combines rodent models of chronic inflammatory and nerve damage pain with electrical recordings on pain-specific neurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. It is one of a handful of labs in the world capable of studying the roles of particular proteins (ion channels) in normal and pathological spinal cord pain signalling. To study the role of these proteins, they have developed a protocol to section spinal cord tissue from juvenile and adult animals. They perform electrophysiological recordings on individual neurons within viable spinal cord slices, which are sectioned in the parasagittal orientation to preserve neuronal processes.