title: Specificity of hemodynamic brain responses to painful stimuli: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.
abstract: Assessing pain in individuals not able to communicate (e.g. infants, under surgery, or following stroke) is difficult due to the lack of non-verbal objective measures of pain. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) being a portable, non-invasive and inexpensive method of monitoring cerebral hemodynamic activity has the potential to provide such a measure. Here we used functional NIRS to evaluate brain activation to an innocuous and a noxious electrical stimulus on healthy human subjects (n = 11). For both innocuous and noxious stimuli, we observed a signal change in the primary somatosensory cortex contralateral to the stimulus. The painful and non-painful stimuli can be differentiated based on their signal size and profile. We also observed that repetitive noxious stimuli resulted in adaptation of the signal. Furthermore, the signal was distinguishable from a skin sympathetic response to pain that tended to mask it. Our results support the notion that functional NIRS has a potential utility as an objective measure of pain.
authors.affiliation: MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Meryem A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Yücel
authors.affiliation: Center for Pain and the Brain, Departments of Anaesthesia and Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA.
authors.forename: Christopher M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Aasted
authors.affiliation: Center for Pain and the Brain, Departments of Anaesthesia and Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA.
authors.forename: Mihayl P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Petkov
authors.affiliation: 1] MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA [2] Center for Pain and the Brain, Departments of Anaesthesia and Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA [3] Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology, MGH.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Borsook
authors.affiliation: MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Boas
authors.affiliation: 1] MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA [2] Center for Pain and the Brain, Departments of Anaesthesia and Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA [3] Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology, MGH.
authors.forename: Lino
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Becerra
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D006358:Hot Temperature; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D000069336:Neurovascular Coupling / Q000502:physiology*; D010146:Pain / Q000097:blood / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology*; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared
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