Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
FMRIB, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Nat Commun. 2021 May 12;12(1):2744. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22960-0.
Understanding the neurophysiology underlying neonatal responses to noxious stimulation is central to improving early life pain management. In this neonatal multimodal MRI study, we use resting-state and diffusion MRI to investigate inter-individual variability in noxious-stimulus evoked brain activity. We observe that cerebral haemodynamic responses to experimental noxious stimulation can be predicted from separately acquired resting-state brain activity (n = 18). Applying this prediction model to independent Developing Human Connectome Project data (n = 215), we identify negative associations between predicted noxious-stimulus evoked responses and white matter mean diffusivity. These associations are subsequently confirmed in the original noxious stimulation paradigm dataset, validating the prediction model. Here, we observe that noxious-stimulus evoked brain activity in healthy neonates is coupled to resting-state activity and white matter microstructure, that neural features can be used to predict responses to noxious stimulation, and that the dHCP dataset could be utilised for future exploratory research of early life pain system neurophysiology.
了解新生儿对伤害性刺激的神经生理学基础对于改善生命早期疼痛管理至关重要。在这项新生儿多模态 MRI 研究中，我们使用静息态和弥散 MRI 来研究伤害性刺激诱发的大脑活动中的个体间变异性。我们观察到，实验性伤害性刺激引起的大脑血液动力学反应可以从单独采集的静息态大脑活动中预测（n=18）。将该预测模型应用于独立的发育人类连接组计划数据（n=215），我们发现预测的伤害性刺激诱发反应与白质平均弥散度之间存在负相关。这些关联随后在原始伤害性刺激范式数据集得到证实，验证了预测模型。在这里，我们观察到健康新生儿的伤害性刺激诱发大脑活动与静息态活动和白质微观结构相关联，神经特征可用于预测伤害性刺激的反应，并且 dHCP 数据集可用于未来对生命早期疼痛系统神经生理学的探索性研究。
