Investigating Pain Processing in the Brain, Brainstem, and Spinal Cord With fMRI
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Neck Pain
- Sponsor
- Northwestern University
- Enrollment
- 13
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging
- Status
- Completed
- Last Updated
- 10 years ago
Overview
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.
Investigators
Todd Parrish
Professor, Department of Radiology
Northwestern University
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- Not provided
Exclusion Criteria
- Not provided
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Time Frame: 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).