Massive modulation of brain areas after mechanical pain stimulation: a time-resolved FMRI study

To date, relatively little is known about the spatiotemporal aspects of whole-brain blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses to brief nociceptive stimuli. It is known that the majority of brain areas show a stimulus-locked response, whereas only some are characterized by a canonical hemody...

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Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) Vol. 24; no. 11; p. 2991
Main Authors: Cauda, Franco, Costa, Tommaso, Diano, Matteo, Sacco, Katiuscia, Duca, Sergio, Geminiani, Giuliano, Torta, Diana M E
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 01.11.2014
Subjects:
Adult
Brain - blood supply
Brain Mapping
Cluster Analysis
Female
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Oxygen
Pain - etiology
Pain - pathology
Pain Perception - physiology
Physical Stimulation - adverse effects
Psychophysics
Reaction Time - physiology
Young Adult
fMRI
BOLD response
pain
clustering
hemodynamic function
ISSN:1460-2199, 1460-2199
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:To date, relatively little is known about the spatiotemporal aspects of whole-brain blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses to brief nociceptive stimuli. It is known that the majority of brain areas show a stimulus-locked response, whereas only some are characterized by a canonical hemodynamic response function. Here, we investigated the time course of brain activations in response to mechanical pain stimulation applied to participants' hands while they were undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. To avoid any assumption about the shape of BOLD response, we used an unsupervised data-driven method to group voxels sharing a time course similar to the BOLD response to the stimulus and found that whole-brain BOLD responses to painful mechanical stimuli elicit massive activation of stimulus-locked brain areas. This pattern of activations can be segregated into 5 clusters, each with a typical temporal profile. In conclusion, we show that an extensive activity of multiple networks is engaged at different time latencies after presentation of a noxious stimulus. These findings aim to motivate research on a controversial topic, such as the temporal profile of BOLD responses, the variability of these response profiles, and the interaction between the stimulus-related BOLD response and ongoing fluctuations in large-scale brain networks.
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ISSN:1460-2199
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bht153