Functional cortical imaging of nausea and vomiting: a possible approach.
From a naive point of view, a study on functional cortical imaging of nausea and vomiting should deliver insight into the basic cortical mechanisms, connections, and time courses, of nausea and vomiting as perceived and processed in the human brain of affected subjects. Until now the brain's response to nausea and vomiting are only inadequately characterized, because studies have been focused mostly on understanding the different mechanisms leading to nausea rather than to cortical activations during nausea or vomiting, respectively. Consequently, the imaging of the "personal experience" of nausea and vomiting can currently be regarded as terra incognita. Nonetheless, the wide variety of the results published on diverse aspects of the topic can be helpful in providing guidelines for a paradigm to further investigations. This paper presents a brief outline for a study on the functional imaging of nauseated humans by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Kowalski
Axel
A
Internal Medicine VI, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Tübingen, Frondsbergstr. 23, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany. axel.kowalski@uni-tuebingen.de
Rapps
Nora
N
Enck
Paul
P
D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009041:Motion Sickness / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009325:Nausea / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014839:Vomiting / Q000503:physiopathology*