Biology subjects

Traub, R. J.

Publications and source records attributed to Traub, R. J..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Sex-dependent changes in insular cortex connectivity in a rat model of comorbid pain

Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are two highly comorbid, nociplastic pain conditions that belong to a broader group of commonly co-occurring chronic pain conditions. Most of these chronic overlapping pain conditions (COPCs), including TMD and IBS, disproportionately affect females and are highly stress sensitive. Our previous study illustrated sex differences in brain activity during colorectal distension specific to our model of comorbid pain hypersensitivity (CPH), in which masseter muscle inflammation followed by restraint stress elicits IBS-like visceral hypersensitivity. Since insular cortex (Ins) activity increased in female CPH rats only and abnormal Ins activity has been identified in TMD and IBS patients, we sought to characterize patterns of Ins-based functional connectivity (FC) by performing functional MRI (fMRI) scans at baseline, 1 week, and 7 weeks post-injury/stress in groups of male and female Sprague-Dawley rats randomized to the following conditions: CPH, stress-induced hypersensitivity (SIH), Complete Freunds Adjuvant (CFA)-induced masseter muscle inflammation, and naive. CPH females displayed extensive Ins FC with brain regions in the cortex and limbic system, including the thalamus. Compared to CPH males, CPH females showed robust insular-thalamo connectivity at week seven, a time point where visceral hypersensitivity and referred pain-like behavior persists in CPH females but not males. This trend is also apparent in CPH females week seven versus week one Ins FC, whereas CPH males tend to decrease Ins FC broadly. These findings potentially suggest sensitization within the insular-thalamo and -cortical networks in CPH females, warranting future investigation of Ins circuit involvement in comorbid pain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Interpretable dimensionality reduction and classification of mass spectrometry imaging data in a visceral pain model via non-negative matrix factorization

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a powerful scientific tool for understanding the spatial distribution of biochemical compounds in tissue structures. MSI data analysis presents problems due to the large file sizes and computational resource requirements and also due to the complexity of interpreting the raw spectral data. Dimensionality reduction techniques that address the first issue do not necessarily result in readily interpretable features. In this paper, we present non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) as a dimensionality reduction algorithm that reduces the size of MSI datasets by three orders of magnitude with limited loss of information, yielding spatial and spectral components with meaningful correlation to tissue structure. This analysis is demonstrated on an MSI dataset from female Sprague-Dawley rats for an animal model of comorbid visceral pain hypersensitivity (CPH). The significant findings are: 1) High-dimensional MSI data ([~] 100,000 ions per pixel) was reduced to 20 spectral NMF components with < 20% loss in reconstruction accuracy. 2) Spatial NMF components are reproducible and correlate well with H&E-stained tissue images. 3) Spatial NMF components may be used to provide images with enhanced specificity for different tissue types. 4) Small patches of NMF data (i.e., 20 spatial NMF components over 20 x 20 pixels) provide an accuracy of[~] 87% in classifying CPH vs nave control subjects. This paper presents novel methodologies for data augmentation to support classification, ranking of features according to their contribution to classification, and image registration to support tissue-specific imaging.

bioinformatics↗