This study evaluated the effect of attention on pain- and auditory-evoked cortical activity in humans using positron emission tomography (PET). Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured while subjects detected changes in thermal intensity or auditory frequency. Subjects rated pain on a visual analogue scale. Using statistical brain maps of the pain-related activity, directed searches were conducted in contralateral insular (IC), anterior cingulate (ACC), primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortices---regions consistently found to be activated by painful stimuli. / Pain intensity was rated higher in the thermal than in the auditory task. Likewise, whereas in the thermal task there were significant pain-related rCBF increases in S1 and S2, none of these regions had significant pain-evoked rCBF increases when subjects performed the auditory task. Only rCBF in S1 was significantly correlated with the pain intensity ratings generated during the thermal and auditory tasks. These results suggest that changes in S1 cortical activity may be involved in attentional modulation of pain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33727 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Carrier, Benoit. |
| Contributors | Bushnell, M. C. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Faculty of Dentistry.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001861984, proquestno: MQ78844, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds