Santana, Melquisedec Abiaré Dantas deSantos, Andrielly Oliveira dos2026-01-082026-01-082025-12-08SANTOS, Andrielly Oliveida dos. Nocicepção visceral e anestesia: mapeamento da expressão de c-fos em núcleos talâmicos. Orientador: Melquisedec Abiaré Dantas de Santana. 2025. 47 f. Monografia (Graduação em Ciências Biológicas) – Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2025.https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/67564Pain is a sensory and emotional experience that, although unpleasant, is fundamental as a defense mechanism and tissue injury signaling, acting through nociceptors and the transmission of neural information. Nociception, which corresponds to the neural processing of harmful stimuli, involves ascending pathways that lead painful information from the peripheral system to central structures, especially the thalamus, which plays an important role as integrator and relay center, modulating pain perception and coordinating behavioral and autonomic responses. The midline nuclei and intralaminares, in particular, are involved in the modulation of alert state, attention, emotion and nociceptive processing, constituting key regions for understanding the functional organization of pain in the central nervous system. In order to investigate the modulation of visceral nociception and evaluate the differential effectiveness of anesthetic agents in blocking neural activity, this study compared the neuronal activation of these thalamic nuclei in rats, using the c-fos immediate expression gene as an indicator of neuronal activity. For this, 12 animals were distributed in the control groups, isoflurane and ketamine/xylazine. The brains were histologically processed, immuno-marked for c-fos and analyzed in standardized coronal sections. The results revealed distinct patterns of neuronal activation between groups. The paraventricular nucleus (PV) showed an 89.9% reduction in neuronal activation in the isoflurane group (in relation to the control), indicating a strong inhibitory effect of this anesthetic on this region. In contrast, the rhomboid nucleus (Rh) showed an increase of approximately 12% of activation in the ketamine + xyazine group, showing that this combination has a specific effect on the neuronal activity of this nucleus. No significant differences were observed in the other nuclei analyzed, suggesting that the effects of anesthetic agents are not evenly distributed throughout the thalamus. Such findings not only reinforce the functional role of intralaminar nuclei and midline pain in the modulation of physiological states and nociceptive processing, but also demonstrate that different anesthetic protocols can selectively modulate neural activity. Therefore, this study contributes to the understanding of the functional organization of the thalamus and establishes a basis for future investigations and protocol optimization in experimental models.pt-BRAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Brazilhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/br/Nocicepçãoc-FosAnestesiaNúcleos intralaminaresNúcleos da linha médiaNociceptionc-fosAnesthesiaIntralaminar nucleiMidline nucleibachelorThesisCIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS