Brain, Brainstem, and Spinal Cord fMRI

Completed

• Conditions: Neck Pain; Chronic Pain
• Interventions: Other: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Registration Number: NCT02356315
• Lead Sponsor: Northwestern University

Brief Summary

New advances in medical imaging have allowed for the measurement of brain activity related to chronic pain. In addition to the brain, the investigators aim to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate pain processing in the brainstem and spinal cord in healthy subjects and chronic neck pain patients. The information gained from this study will increase the investigators understanding of how chronic pain is encoded in the nervous system and assist in developing more effective treatment strategies.

Detailed Description

The experimental design is an observational (non-interventional) cross-sectional clinical study. The principal goal of the proposed research is to utilize functional magnetic resonance imaging to further investigate and characterize pain-related neural activity at the level of the brain, brainstem, and spinal cord in healthy subjects and chronic neck pain patients. Healthy subjects and chronic neck pain patients will be recruited and participate in a single session of data collection. For both the healthy and chronic neck pain groups, painful thermal stimuli will be applied over the skin of the upper extremity while whole brain, brainstem, and cervical spinal cord functional images are acquired (on separate scans). For the chronic neck pain group, additional scans (brain, brainstem, and cervical spinal cord) will be acquired while the subjects rate their spontaneous chronic neck pain.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2015-01
• Study First Submitted: 2015-02-02
• Study First Submitted QC: 2015-02-04
• Study First Posted: 2015-02-05
• Status Verified: 2015-12
• Primary Completion: 2015-12
• Study Completion: 2015-12
• Last Update Submitted: 2015-12-18
• Last Update Posted: 2015-12-21

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 13

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

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Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

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Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Healthy subjects	Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging	Functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy subjects
Chronic neck pain patients	Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging	Functional magnetic resonance imaging of chronic neck pain patients

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Functional magnetic resonance imaging	1.5-2.25 hours	Use functional magnetic resonance imaging to characterize brain, brainstem, and spinal cord pain processing in healthy subjects (thermal pain) and chronic neck pain patients (thermal pain and spontaneous clinical pain).

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Center for Translational Imaging, Northwestern University; 🇺🇸 Chicago, Illinois, United States