Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is an idiopathic orofacial pain condition. Although the pathophysiology of BMS is not clearly understood, central and peripheral neuropathic mechanisms are thought to be involved. The authors compared brain response to noxious heat stimuli in 16 right-handed women with primary BMS and 15 sex- and age-matched right-handed healthy female controls. A thermal stimulus sequence of 32 °C to 40 °C to 32 °C to 49 °C was repeated 4 times in a cycle. Warm and noxious heat stimuli were delivered with a Peltier thermode placed on the right palm or right lower lip for 32 s each in a session. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained by recording echoplanar images with a block design. Statistical Parametric Mapping 8 software was used to analyze the data. Patients and controls both reported feeling more pain during palm stimulation than during lip stimulation. Repetition of noxious heat stimulus on the lower lip but not on the palm induced habituation in brain activity in the cingulate cortex without reduction in pain perception. Multiple regression analysis revealed a correlation between perceived pain intensity and suppression of brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex when the repeated thermal sequence was applied at the lower lip. Furthermore, the response of the parahippocampal area differed in BMS patients and controls when the same repeated thermal sequence was applied at the palm. The authors' findings indicate that BMS patients show specific brain responses due to impaired function of the central and peripheral nervous systems (clinical trial registration: UMIN000015002).

We investigated the temporal association between temporomandibular disorders (TMD)-related symptoms and headache during TMD treatment for patients who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for headache attributed to TMD (HATMD) specified in the Diagnostic criteria for TMD (DC/TMD) and International classification of headache disorders (ICHD)-3 beta. The study enrolled 34 patients with HATMD induced by masticatory myofascial pain but not by temporomandibular arthralgia. Facial pain intensity, the pressure pain threshold of pericranial muscles, and maximum unassisted opening of the jaw were assessed at an initial examination and before and after physical therapy. The intensity and frequency of headache episodes and tooth contact ratio were also recorded before and after the intervention. Headache intensity and frequency significantly decreased, and these reductions were temporally related to improvements in facial pain intensity, maximum unassisted opening, and pressure pain threshold during TMD treatment. Linear regression analysis showed significant correlations between facial pain intensity and headache intensity and between tooth contact ratio and pressure pain threshold. Among patients who fulfilled the DC/TMD and ICHD-3 beta diagnostic criteria for HATMD, headache improved during TMD treatment, and the improvement was temporally related to amelioration of TMD symptoms. These findings suggest that sensitization in the central and peripheral nervous systems is responsible for HATMD. (J Oral Sci 58, 195-204, 2016).

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the image quality and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of single-shot turbo spin echo (TSE) diffusion-weighted (DW) images obtained using a parallel imaging (PI) technique. Methods: All measurements were performed on a 3.0-T whole-body MRI system and 32-channel phased-array coil. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and ADC values were measured with a DW imaging (DWI) phantom comprising granulated sugar and agar. The SNRs were calculated using a subtraction method and compared among TSE-DW images at acceleration factors (AFs) of 1-4. Image blur was visually assessed on TSE-DW images of a pin phantom at AFs of 1-4. The ADC values were calculated using DW images with b 5 0 and 1000 s mm

he sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is an important control mechanisms of the body, dysfunction of which is well known to be associated with the development of various common cardiovascular diseases, such as ischemic heart disease, 1 congestive heart failure, 2 arrhythmias, 3 and sudden death. 4 It is also well known that the frequency and the onset of these diseases have age-and gender-related differences. 5,6 Likewise, the SNS shows physiologic fluctuations with age and sex, 7-15 which are considered to be related to gender differences in the frequency of cardiovascular diseases and the markedly increased risk of cardiovascular diseases with aging. Therefore, it is very important to assess physiological changes in sympathetic cardiovascular control in humans, especially in the cardiac SNS, because many cardiovascular diseases originate from the heart. However, as there are no appropriate methods of measuring the cardiac SNS in vivo, the precise physiological changes remain unclear.123 I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) imaging has become widely used to evaluate human cardiac sympathetic nervous function [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] because it gives information about cardiac sympathetic nerve endings. Using MIBG imaging, the aim of this study was to assess the age-and gender-related differences in the global cardiac SNS in normal subjects. Methods PatientsWe investigated 153 patients whose ages ranged from 40 to 89 years were referred for cardiac catheterization because of chest pain or electrocardiogram (ECG) abnormality, and which revealed a nearly normal coronary artery without coronary spasm induced by acetylcholine and with normal cardiac function and hemodynamics. After cardiac catheterization, they underwent MIBG imaging. The subjects were 74 men and 79 women who did not have obvious heart disease, hypertension (≥140 mmHg systolic blood pressure, or ≥90 mmHg diastolic blood pressure), obesity (body mass index (BMI) >25 kg/m 2 ), diabetes mellitus or any other diseases affecting the autonomic nervous system. In addition, they did not take any drugs known to affect MIBG kinetics. We included 10 women who fulfilled the inclusion criteria and had undergone surgical menopause without oral hormone replacement therapy before physiological menopause because we wanted to investigate the effect of menopause on the cardiac SNS. Written informed consent was given by the each patient and the study was approved by the hospital's ethics committee. Cardiac CatheterizationAfter right-heart catheterization with a Swan-Ganz catheter, all patients underwent coronary angiography (CAG) performed by the Judkins technique. Prior to CAG, a tem- Michitoshi Ito, RT*; Yoshihiro Nakaya, RT* Background Physiologic changes in the human sympathetic nervous system (SNS) may be associated with cardiovascular diseases, so the present study assessed the age and gender differences in global cardiac SNS in normal subjects. Methods and ResultsThe 163 subjects (74 men, 89 women; age range 40-89 years) whose coronary arteriogram was normal, and w...

The purpose of our study was to investigate the validity of a spatial resolution measuring method that uses a combination of a bar-pattern phantom and an imageaveraging technique, and to evaluate the spatial resolution property of iterative reconstruction (IR) images with middle-contrast (50 HU) objects. We used computed tomography (CT) images of the bar-pattern phantom reconstructed by the IR technology Adaptive Iterative Dose Reduction 3D (AIDR 3D), which was installed in the multidetector CT system Aquilion ONE (Toshiba Medical Systems, Otawara, Japan). The contrast of the bar-pattern image was set to 50 HU, which is considered to be a middle contrast that requires higher spatial resolution clinically. We employed an image-averaging technique to eliminate the influence of image noise, and we obtained averaged images of the bar-pattern phantom with sufficiently low noise. Modulation transfer functions (MTFs) were measured from the images. The conventional wire method was also used for comparison; in this method, AIDR 3D showed MTF values equivalent to those of filtered back projection. For the middle-contrast condition, the results showed that the MTF of AIDR 3D decreased with the strength of IR processing. Further, the MTF of AIDR 3D decreased with dose reduction. The imageaveraging technique used was effective for correct evaluation of the spatial resolution for middle-contrast objects in IR images. The results obtained by our method clarified that the resolution preservation of AIDR 3D was not sufficient for middle-contrast objects.