The dataset contains the underlying data for the figures in the paper "3D microelectrode cluster and stimulation paradigm yield powerful analgesia without noticeable adverse effects" by M. Forni et al., Science Advances, 2021. In the reported study, we present a newly developed biocompatible gelatin-embedded cluster of microelectrodes that enable higly customizable stimulation in the periaqueductal gray/dorsal raphe nucleus in awake rats. We were able to select a subset of electrodes for each individual, that upon stimulation provided significant pain inhibition during both normal and hyperalgesia conditions, without noticable side effects.

Pain responses were quantified in terms of evoked field potentials (FP) and neuronal activity (z score), as well as withdrawal rate (WR) resulting from stimulating the skin with either a CO2-laser or a tactile stimulator, and analyzed with respect to multiple variables, such as time from stimulation onset, effect in comparison to morphine administration etc. Also, the effects of stimulation were quantified in terms of gait parameters (speed and paw-usage symmetry).

The location of implanted electrodes was verified using computed tomography (CT) imaging and superimposition to the Waxholm brain atlas. The dataset contains the CT images for each anaimal, as obtained after alignment to the atlas.

See methods section of the paper "3D microelectrode cluster and stimulation paradigm yield powerful analgesia without noticeable adverse effects" by M. Forni et al.

The filenames refer to the figure names in the paper "3D microelectrode cluster and stimulation paradigm yield powerful analgesia without noticeable adverse effects" by M. Forni et al.. The dataset is structured according to the figures presented in the paper, i.e. names of datafiles correspond to figure names in the paper (e.g. the file "Fig3A.xlsx" contains the data underlying the plots in Fig. 3A). Each xlsx-file contains several sheets, each corresponding to the subpanels of the figures. CT-images are in Nifti format and are aligned and resampled to match the Waxholm Brain atlas (https://www.nitrc.org/projects/whs-sd-atlas) which is used for localizing the stimulation electrodes within the brain. The images can be opened using any software for 3D-image analysis. The corresponding figures in the paper were obtained using Matlab, but they can be opened and viewed using e.g. itk-SNAP (http://www.itksnap.org).

For more information, please refer to the readme file.