Neural correlates of prickle sensation: a percept-related fMRI study

The painful sensations produced by a laceration, freeze, burn, muscle strain or internal injury are readily distinguishable because each is characterized by a particular sensory quality such as sharp, aching, burning or prickling. We propose that there are specific neural correlates of each pain quality, and here we used a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method to identify time-locked responses to prickle sensations that were evoked by noxious cold stimuli. With percept-related fMRI, we identified prickle-related brain activations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), prefrontal cortex (PFC), premotor cortex (PMC), caudate nucleus and dorsomedial thalamus, indicating that multiple pain, sensory and motor areas act together to produce the prickle sensation.

[1]  R.N.Dej.,et al.  Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain , 1954, Neurology.

[2]  M. Bushnell,et al.  Noxious and innocuous cold discrimination in humans: evidence for separate afferent channels , 1996, Pain.

[3]  C. L. Kwan,et al.  Event‐related fMRI of pain: entering a new era in imaging pain , 1998, Neuroreport.

[4]  R. Westerman,et al.  Identification of the physical stimulus and the neural basis of fabric-evoked prickle. , 1988, Journal of neurophysiology.

[5]  M Ingvar,et al.  Urge to scratch represented in the human cerebral cortex during itch. , 1994, Journal of neurophysiology.

[6]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[7]  Anthony K. P. Jones,et al.  The cortical representation of pain , 1999, PAIN.

[8]  R. Westerman,et al.  Transcutaneous electrical stimulation and the sensation of prickle. , 1988, Journal of neurophysiology.

[9]  M. Raichle,et al.  Tactile-vibration-activated foci in insular and parietal-opercular cortex studied with positron emission tomography: mapping the second somatosensory area in humans. , 1993, Somatosensory & motor research.

[10]  P Baraldi,et al.  Temporal and intensity coding of pain in human cortex. , 1998, Journal of neurophysiology.

[11]  R. Peyron,et al.  Functional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis (2000) , 2000, Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology.

[12]  J. Marshall.  THE SKIN SENSES , 1969 .

[13]  J. Downar,et al.  A cortical network sensitive to stimulus salience in a neutral behavioral context across multiple sensory modalities. , 2002, Journal of neurophysiology.

[14]  H. Jasper,et al.  Epilepsy and the functional anatomy of the human brain , 1985 .

[15]  K. Davis.  Cold-induced pain and prickle in the glabrous and hairy skin , 1998, Pain.

[16]  Karen D Davis,et al.  Noxious cold evokes multiple sensations with distinct time courses , 2002, Pain.