Yücel Meryem A, Aasted Christopher M, Petkov Mihayl P, Borsook David, Boas David A, Becerra Lino
MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA.
Center for Pain and the Brain, Departments of Anaesthesia and Radiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA.
Sci Rep. 2015 Mar 30;5:9469. doi: 10.1038/srep09469.
Assessing pain in individuals not able to communicate (e.g. infants, under surgery, or following stroke) is difficult due to the lack of non-verbal objective measures of pain. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) being a portable, non-invasive and inexpensive method of monitoring cerebral hemodynamic activity has the potential to provide such a measure. Here we used functional NIRS to evaluate brain activation to an innocuous and a noxious electrical stimulus on healthy human subjects (n = 11). For both innocuous and noxious stimuli, we observed a signal change in the primary somatosensory cortex contralateral to the stimulus. The painful and non-painful stimuli can be differentiated based on their signal size and profile. We also observed that repetitive noxious stimuli resulted in adaptation of the signal. Furthermore, the signal was distinguishable from a skin sympathetic response to pain that tended to mask it. Our results support the notion that functional NIRS has a potential utility as an objective measure of pain.
由于缺乏疼痛的非语言客观测量方法，评估无法交流的个体（如婴儿、手术中或中风后的患者）的疼痛是困难的。近红外光谱（NIRS）作为一种便携式、非侵入性且廉价的监测脑血流动力学活动的方法，有潜力提供这样一种测量方法。在此，我们使用功能性近红外光谱来评估健康人类受试者（n = 11）对无害和有害电刺激的脑激活情况。对于无害和有害刺激，我们均观察到刺激对侧的初级体感皮层出现信号变化。基于信号大小和特征，可以区分疼痛刺激和非疼痛刺激。我们还观察到重复性有害刺激会导致信号适应。此外，该信号可与往往会掩盖它的皮肤对疼痛的交感反应区分开来。我们的结果支持功能性近红外光谱作为疼痛客观测量方法具有潜在效用这一观点。
