Somatotopic arrangement of thermal sensory regions in the healthy human spinal cord determined by means of spinal cord functional MRI.

Previous functional MRI studies of normal sensory function in the human spinal cord, including right-to-left symmetry of activity, have been influenced by order effects between repeated studies. In this study, we apply thermal sensory stimulation to four dermatomes within each functional MRI time-series acquisition. Each of the four dermatomes receives a unique stimulation paradigm, such that the four paradigms form a linearly independent set, enabling detection of each individual stimulus response. Functional MRI data are shown spanning the cervical spinal cord and brainstem in 10 healthy volunteers. Results of general linear model analysis demonstrate consistent patterns of activity within the spinal cord segments corresponding to each dermatome, and a high degree of symmetry between right-side and left-side stimulation. Connectivity analyses also demonstrate consistent areas of activity and connectivity between spinal cord and brainstem regions corresponding to known anatomy. However, right-side and left-side responses are not at precisely the same rostral-caudal positions, but are offset by several millimeters, with left-side responses consistently more caudal than right-side responses. The results confirm that distinct responses to multiple interleaved sensory stimuli can be distinguished, enabling studies of sensory responses within the spinal cord without the confounding effects of comparing sequential studies.