About the contributor

• Jyoti N. Sengupta

Jyoti N. Sengupta

Jyoti N. Sengupta obtained his PhD in Physiology at the University of Calcutta College of Science in 1983, where he documented the sensory innervation of the lower gut of birds. He received his training in pharmacology at the College of Pharmacy in Ohio State University. He joined Harvard Medical School in 1987 where his major contribution was to characterize the sensory pathways transmitting nociception from the esophagus to the central nervous system. He documented the existence of high threshold nociceptive sensory neurons in the thoracic spinal nerves that innervate the esophagus: a major contribution in the field. He first demonstrated that the vagal afferent fibers in the viscera are functionally different form spinal afferents and that visceral pain is primarily transmitted via spinal visceral afferents. This finding is now well accepted and many other investigators have subsequently confirmed his novel report. In 1991, Dr Sengupta advanced his training by joining the laboratory of Dr Gerald F. Gebhart where he spent seven years. During this time he was most productive in developing several animal models of visceral pain. He was the first to record the pelvic nerve afferent fibers in vivo in the rat and showed that kappa opioids produce analgesia by attenuating visceral primary sensory neurons. His book chapter, 'Gastrointestinal Afferent Fibers and Sensation' published in Physiology of the Gastrointestinal Tract, remains one of the most cited in the area. He received NIH funding in 1997 to study gastric pain and changes in sensory modalities under pathologic conditions. His exceptional reputation in the field lead to his recruitment by AstraZeneca, and in 1997 he left academia to head their research department as an associate director. However, his commitment to academia and his thirst for mentoring young scientists forced him to return to the academia life in 2000 when he joined the Medical College of Wisconsin at the rank of Assistant Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology. Since that time he has continued to be an extremely active investigator. His efforts have been recently rewarded having obtained NIH R01 funding to explore the underlying mechanism of non-cardiac chest pain. He and his colleagues were the first to document that chronic somatic pain can influence the visceral sensation by developing spinal sensitization. He has also reported that NMDA and AMPA receptor antagonists can peripherally regulate food intake in the rat by attenuating responses of the gastric vagal afferent fibers. Dr Sengupta is an extremely well regarded scientist who has obtained national and international recognition for his work on animal models of visceral pain.