Evidence for a spinal involvement in temporal pain contrast enhancement
Standard
Evidence for a spinal involvement in temporal pain contrast enhancement. / Sprenger, Christian; Stenmans, Philip; Tinnermann, Alexandra; Büchel, Christian.
In: NEUROIMAGE, Vol. 183, 12.2018, p. 788-799.Research output: SCORING: Contribution to journal › SCORING: Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Evidence for a spinal involvement in temporal pain contrast enhancement
AU - Sprenger, Christian
AU - Stenmans, Philip
AU - Tinnermann, Alexandra
AU - Büchel, Christian
N1 - Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - Spatiotemporal filtering and amplification of sensory information at multiple levels during the generation of perceptual representations is a fundamental processing principle of the nervous system. While for the visual and auditory system temporal filtering of sensory signals has been noticed for a long time, respective contrast mechanisms within the nociceptive system became only recently subject of investigations, mainly in the context of offset analgesia (OA) subsequent to noxious stimulus decreases. In the present study we corroborate in a first experiment the assumption that offset analgesia involves a central component by showing that an OA-like effect accounting for 74% of a corresponding OA reference can be evoked by decomposing the stimulus offset into two separate box-car stimuli applied within the same dermatome but to separate populations of primary afferent neurons. In order to draw conclusions about the levels of the CNS at which temporal filtering of nociceptive information takes place during OA we investigate in a second experiment neuronal activity in the spinal cord during a painful thermal stimulus offset employing high-resolution fMRI in healthy volunteers. Pain-related BOLD responses in the spinal cord were significantly reduced during OA and their time course followed widely behavioral hypoalgesia, but not the thermal stimulation profile. In summary, the results suggest that temporal pain contrast enhancement during OA comprises a central mechanism and this mechanism becomes already effective at the level of the spinal cord.
AB - Spatiotemporal filtering and amplification of sensory information at multiple levels during the generation of perceptual representations is a fundamental processing principle of the nervous system. While for the visual and auditory system temporal filtering of sensory signals has been noticed for a long time, respective contrast mechanisms within the nociceptive system became only recently subject of investigations, mainly in the context of offset analgesia (OA) subsequent to noxious stimulus decreases. In the present study we corroborate in a first experiment the assumption that offset analgesia involves a central component by showing that an OA-like effect accounting for 74% of a corresponding OA reference can be evoked by decomposing the stimulus offset into two separate box-car stimuli applied within the same dermatome but to separate populations of primary afferent neurons. In order to draw conclusions about the levels of the CNS at which temporal filtering of nociceptive information takes place during OA we investigate in a second experiment neuronal activity in the spinal cord during a painful thermal stimulus offset employing high-resolution fMRI in healthy volunteers. Pain-related BOLD responses in the spinal cord were significantly reduced during OA and their time course followed widely behavioral hypoalgesia, but not the thermal stimulation profile. In summary, the results suggest that temporal pain contrast enhancement during OA comprises a central mechanism and this mechanism becomes already effective at the level of the spinal cord.
KW - Adult
KW - Female
KW - Hot Temperature
KW - Humans
KW - Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods
KW - Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods
KW - Male
KW - Pain
KW - Pain Threshold/physiology
KW - Spinal Cord/physiology
KW - Young Adult
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.003
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.003
M3 - SCORING: Journal article
C2 - 30189340
VL - 183
SP - 788
EP - 799
JO - NEUROIMAGE
JF - NEUROIMAGE
SN - 1053-8119
ER -