Abstract
The purpose of this study was to use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine patterns of both activation and deactivation that occur in the frontal lobe in response to noxious stimuli. The frontal lobe was selected because it has been shown to be activated by noxious stimuli in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. The brain region is located behind the forehead which is devoid of hair, providing a relative ease of placement for fNIRS probes on this area of the head. Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies showing blood-oxygenation-level dependent changes in the frontal lobes, we evaluated functional near-infrared spectroscopy measures in response to two levels of electrical pain in awake, healthy human subjects (n = 10; male = 10). Each subject underwent two recording sessions separated by a 30-minute resting period. Data collected from 7 subjects were analyzed, containing a total of 38/36 low/high intensity pain stimuli for the first recording session and 27/31 pain stimuli for the second session. Our results show that there is a robust and significant deactivation in sections of the frontal cortices. Further development and definition of the specificity and sensitivity of the approach may provide an objective measure of nociceptive activity in the brain that can be easily applied in the surgical setting.
Highlights
While subjective measures of pain may be helpful in the clinic, there are a number of clinical conditions where subjects are either drowsy or unconscious during tissue damage, such as surgery
Providing adequate anesthesia during surgery is routine, but we do not have a good measure of nociceptive stimuli that may act on brain systems
The remaining seven data sets contained a total of 65 usable low pain intensity stimuli and 67 high pain intensity stimuli, and were analyzed to determine the group mean hemodynamic response over the central and lateral probe sections presented in Source 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 9 9 10 10
Summary
While subjective measures of pain may be helpful in the clinic, there are a number of clinical conditions where subjects are either drowsy or unconscious during tissue damage, such as surgery. Providing adequate anesthesia during surgery is routine, but we do not have a good measure of nociceptive stimuli that may act on brain systems. Our prior report suggests that during anesthesia, activation of certain brain regions may take place during nociceptive stimulation[1].
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