Brain Mechanisms Supporting Spatial Discrimination of Pain

Oshiro, Yasuo; Quevedo, Alexandre Silva de; McHaffie, John G.; Kraft, Robert A.; Coghill, Robert C.

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.5128-06.2007

Cited by 122 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Importantly, the division of attention between two stimuli abolished spatial summation and may reflect the initiation of inhibitory processes (Oshiro et al, 2007;Quevedo and Coghill, 2007). Reduction of pain during multifocal noxious stimulation can result when one noxious stimulus inhibits another (Le Bars et al, 1979).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional Modulation of Spatial Integration of Pain: Evidence for Dynamic Spatial Tuning

Quevedo

Coghill²

2007

J. Neurosci.

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In many sensory modalities, afferent processing is dynamically modulated by attention and this modulation produces altered sensory experiences. Attention is able to alter perceived pain, but the mechanisms involved in this modulation have not been elucidated. To determine whether attention alters spatial integration of nociceptive information, subjects were recruited to evaluate pain from pairs of noxious/innocuous thermal stimuli during different spatial attentional tasks. Divided attention was able to abolish spatial summation and produce inhibition of pain. In contrast, directed attention enhanced pain intensity by partially integrating both stimuli. This dynamic modulation of spatial integration indicates that attention alters spatial dimensions of afferent nociceptive processing to optimize the perceptual response to input from a particular body region or stimulus feature. This dynamic spatial tuning of nociceptive processing provides a new conceptual insight into the functional significance of endogenous pain inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional Modulation of Spatial Integration of Pain: Evidence for Dynamic Spatial Tuning

Quevedo

Coghill²

2007

J. Neurosci.

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“…The early peak in the heat respond resembles the brush response, this could be explained in part as a consequence of the experimental procedure; the thermode was lowered on the hand during stimulation, hence, a sensory (touch) component was present in addition to a thermal one. The second peak might reflect the sensation of pain; there are several lines of evidence to support this: experiments to determine heat pain discrimination found that heat pain tends to summate over time (Oshiro et al 2007) accordingly a late response in S1 is expected. Becerra et al (2001) reported responses to a similar painful stimulus and to a non-noxious thermal stimulus (Becerra et al 2001), the innocuous stimulus produced only one early peak in the hemodynamic response while the noxious heat produced two, these results suggested that the late peak was uniquely associated with pain.…”

Section: Activation In the Somatosensory Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diffuse optical tomography of pain and tactile stimulation: Activation in cortical sensory and emotional systems

et al. 2008

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Using Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) we detected activation in the somatosensory cortex and frontal brain areas following tactile (brush) and noxious heat stimulation. Healthy volunteers received stimulation to the dorsum of the right hand. In the somatosensory cortex area, tactile stimulation produced a robust, contralateral to the stimulus, hemodynamic response with a weaker activation on the ipsilateral side. For the same region, noxious thermal stimuli produced bilateral activation of similar intensity that had a prolonged activation with a two-peak similar to results have been reported with functional MRI. Bilateral activation was observed in the frontal areas, oxyhemoglobin changes were positive for brush stimulation while they were initially negative (contralateral) for heat stimulation. These results suggest that based on the temporal and spatial characteristics of the response in the sensory cortex, it is possible to discern painful from mechanical stimulation using DOT. Such ability might have potential applications in a clinical setting in which pain needs to be assessed objectively (e.g. analgesic efficacy, pain responses during surgery).

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“…Indeed, neurons in PO and IPL have visual responses and display more intense neuronal activation after actual noxious than non-noxious somatosensory stimuli (Dong et al, 1994). Parietal areas are involved in sensory-discriminative aspects of pain (Porro, 2003;Price et al, 2003) and specifically in the spatial localization of painful stimuli (Kanda et al, 1999;Oshiro et al, 2007;Porro et al, 2007) and are heavily connected with insular and cingulate cortices (Craig, 2003;Vogt, 2005). The location of active foci during the observation of painful events is similar to that found during actual noxious mechanical stimulation of the right hand (Lui et al, 2008b).…”

Section: Brain Regions Involved In the Observation Of Unpleasant Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Does It Look Painful or Disgusting? Ask Your Parietal and Cingulate Cortex

Benuzzi¹,

Lui²,

Duzzi³

et al. 2008

J. Neurosci.

141

109

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Looking at still images of body parts in situations that are likely to cause pain has been shown to be associated with activation in some brain areas involved in pain processing. Because pain involves both sensory components and negative affect, it is of interest to explore whether the visually evoked representations of pain and of other negative emotions overlap. By means of event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, here we compare the brain areas recruited, in female volunteers, by the observation of painful, disgusting, or neutral stimuli delivered to one hand or foot. Several cortical foci were activated by the observation of both painful and disgusting video clips, including portions of the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior, mid-, and posterior cingulate cortex, left posterior insula, and right parietal operculum. Signal changes in perigenual cingulate and left anterior insula were linearly related to the perceived unpleasantness, when the individual differences in susceptibility to aversive stimuli were taken into account. Painful scenes selectively induced activation of left parietal foci, including the parietal operculum, the postcentral gyrus, and adjacent portions of the posterior parietal cortex. In contrast, brain foci specific for disgusting scenes were found in the posterior cingulate cortex. These data show both similarities and differences between the brain patterns of activity related to the observation of noxious or disgusting stimuli. Namely, the parietal cortex appears to be particularly involved in the recognition of noxious environmental stimuli, suggesting that areas involved in sensory aspects of pain are specifically triggered by observing noxious events.

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Brain Mechanisms Supporting Spatial Discrimination of Pain

Cited by 122 publications

References 43 publications

Attentional Modulation of Spatial Integration of Pain: Evidence for Dynamic Spatial Tuning

Attentional Modulation of Spatial Integration of Pain: Evidence for Dynamic Spatial Tuning

Diffuse optical tomography of pain and tactile stimulation: Activation in cortical sensory and emotional systems

Does It Look Painful or Disgusting? Ask Your Parietal and Cingulate Cortex

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