Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the human spinal cord and brainstem with application to pain states

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

One in five people will experience chronic pain during their lives. Changes in the way the body processes pain signals are thought to underlie how, after injury, pain can become chronic. When you hurt yourself, pain signals are carried from the damaged tissue to the brain. On their way to the brain, they pass up the spinal cord and through the brainstem. However, when trying to find out what goes wrong in chronic pain, current imaging methods only allow researchers to look within the brain and brainstem. We would like to develop new methods that would allow us to look within the spinal cord as well. This is important for two reasons: (1) we know from animal experiments that the brainstem and spinal cord work together to increase or decrease the size of pain signals, and (2) abnormal changes in the function of the brainstem and spinal cord can make pain become chronic. In this project we will see how pain signals are processed in the spinal cord and brainstem in humans, and by doing so, get a better understanding of how pain is controlled, and hopefully learn why some people develop chronic pain after injury.