Cortical activity changes as related to oral irritation-an fNIRS study

We present the first investigation of how the cortical regions of the brain respond to the sensations related to oral irritation, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS is used to record irritant-induced activities in the prefrontal and somatosensory regions of nine healthy individuals. Two types of solutions, irritant-free and soft tissue-irritant-contained, are adopted as the stimuli for the control and task experiments, respectively. Our findings reveal that both somatosensory and prefrontal regions show activity as a result of oral irritation. Furthermore, using moving window analysis, we identify the time interval during which the largest number of channels (indicative of high involvement of cortical regions) show irritant-induced activity. Our results indicate that fNIRS can be used to study brain activities related to oral irritation.

[1]  S. Kinomura,et al.  Functional anatomy of taste perception in the human brain studied with positron emission tomography , 1994, Brain Research.

[2]  M. O'Mahony,et al.  It hurts so good: Oral irritation by spices and carbonated drinks and the underlying neural mechanisms , 2002 .

[3]  Tsunehiro Takeda,et al.  The primary gustatory area in human cerebral cortex studied by magnetoencephalography , 1996, Neuroscience Letters.

[4]  Paolo Gasparini,et al.  Individual differences in prefrontal cortex activity during perception of bitter taste using fNIRS methodology. , 2010, Chemical senses.

[5]  Xu Cui,et al.  Functional near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signal improvement based on negative correlation between oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin dynamics , 2010, NeuroImage.

[6]  Edmund T. Rolls,et al.  Human cortical representation of oral temperature , 2007, Physiology & Behavior.

[7]  G. Kobal.  Gustatory evoked potentials in man. , 1985, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[8]  Laleh Najafizadeh,et al.  On the Relationship Between Trial-to-Trial Response Time Variability and fNIRS-Based Functional Connectivity , 2016 .

[9]  Y. Ariji,et al.  Experimental pain in the gingiva and its impact on prefrontal cortical hemodynamics: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study , 2014, Neuroscience Letters.

[10]  M. Shintani,et al.  Cortical Representation Area of Human Dental Pulp , 2008, Journal of dental research.

[11]  A. Rosen,et al.  A portable near infrared spectroscopy system for bedside monitoring of newborn brain , 2005, Biomedical engineering online.

[12]  L. Clowney,et al.  Activation in ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex during the act of tasting: An fNIRS study , 2009, Neuroscience Letters.

[13]  P. Haggard,et al.  Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews , 2022 .

[14]  Archana K. Singh,et al.  Spatial registration of multichannel multi-subject fNIRS data to MNI space without MRI , 2005, NeuroImage.

[15]  Edmund T Rolls,et al.  Representation in the Human Brain of Food Texture and Oral Fat , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[16]  M. Nicolelis,et al.  Multisensory Processing of Gustatory Stimuli , 2008, Chemosensory perception.

[17]  E. Wassermann,et al.  Normative database of judgment of complexity task with functional near infrared spectroscopy—Application for TBI , 2012, NeuroImage.