OBIDOS,
16 August
> 10 September
Application
deadline: march 2004
self-portrait
circa 1995 (i.e.last century)
I started my research efforts in the Morphophysiology Unit in 1995 doing morphology and have since then moved to physiology - a scientific path in so strict accordance to the designation of the unit that sometimes I think how fortunate I was for not having joined a Psychogeology Unit! That would have made my life very miserable...
On the contrary, I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play in both sides of a very enjoyable subject: Pain Coding. My studies have centered so far on the neural populations of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord (with some occasional ventures to the somatosensory lateral thalamus...). Sheding light on the intrincacy of the spinal neural networks from both an anatomical and a physiological basis, has been a wonderful and delightful challenge.
Presently my main interests are the extracellular recording of neuronal activity using many electrodes implanted in the spinal cord. This enables me to record simultaneously from groups of neighboring neurons, and learn how they encode and transmit the painful information arriving from the periphery. A second goal is to understand the plasticity of the spinal networks and how they reorganize themselves during the onset of a chronic painful pathology.
Fig.1
Fig.2
The above figures are color-scale illustrations of neuronal activity. They are taken from one exemplar spinal recording. In this case the recording is that of 9 deep dorsal horn neurons 30 minutes before and 3 hours after the establishment of peripheral inflammation by the subcutaneous injection of formalin. In Fig.1 each panel represents the activity of the 9 cells during periods of 6 minutes and their response to both tapping and pinching (white bars on top); Fig 2. shows the temporal change in the correlated activity of the 45 pairwise combinations between the 9 cells.
More details about these and other results may be found in the links below (that I intend to update regularly):
The
poster I presented at the 2000 SFN meeting in New Orleans (Powerpoint file)
Populational dynamics and
functional connectivity of spinal dorsal horn cells
following formalin-induced
peripheral inflammation
The
poster I presented at the 1998 SFN meeting in Los Angeles (Powerpoint file)
Population dynamics in the somatosensory
thalamus after partial ligation
of the sciatic nerve in the
rat
contacts:
Vasco Galhardo
IBMC - Institute for Molecular
and Cell Biology, Univ Porto
Morphophysiology Unit - Room
2.69
Rua Campo Alegre, 823
4150-180 PORTO
PORTUGAL
Tel: (351)
- 22 607 49 00
Fax: (351) - 22 550 57 28
galhardo@med.up.pt
- http://users.med.up.pt/galhardo
(2002-2005) - Project IST-2001-34892,
funded by the European Union.
ROSANA
– Representation Of Stimuli as Neural Activity
(2002-2005) - Project POCTI
/ NSE / 38995 / 2001, funded by FCT - Portugal.
Functional
Dynamics of Pain: sensorial reorganization of neuronal populations
induced
by chronic pain and microstimulation
(1998-2001) - Project PRAXIS/P/SAU/
10170/1998, funded by FCT - Portugal.
Nociceptive Coding by Neuronal Ensembles
in the Spinal Cord
(1999-2000) - Project BIOTECH
BIO-CT98-0076, funded by the European Union.
(1995-1998) - Project PECS/C/SAU/171/95,
funded by JNICT - Portugal.
publications:
Galhardo V, Apkarian AV &
Lima D (2002). Peripheral inflammation increases the
functional coherency of spinal responses to tactile
but not nociceptive stimulation.
Journal of Neurophysiology, in press. 
Galhardo V, Castro AR, Castro-Lopes
JM & Lima D (2002). Lamina I spinal cord
neurons in the monkey: structural classes and differential
expression of GABA-B
receptors.
Journal of Comparative Neurology, submitted.
Brüggemann J, Galhardo
V & Apkarian AV (2001). Immediate reorganization of
the rat somatosensory thalamus after partial ligation
of the sciatic nerve.
Journal of Pain, 2, 220-228.
Galhardo V, Lima D & Necker
R (2000). Spinomedullary pathways in the pigeon
(Columba livia); differential involvement
of lamina I cells.
Journal of Comparative Neurology, 423, 631-645.
Galhardo V & Lima D (1999).
Structural characterization of marginal (lamina I) spinal
cord neurons in the cat. A Golgi study.
Journal of Comparative Neurology, 414, 315-333.