Medical Engineering & Physics
Volume 30, Issue 8 , Pages 953-958, October 2008

BOLD fMRI mapping of brain responses to nociceptive stimuli in rats under ketamine anesthesia

  • Yen-Yu I. Shih

      Affiliations

    • Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
    • Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
    • ,
  • Chen Chang

      Affiliations

    • Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +886 2 2789 9027; fax: +886 2 2788 7641.
    • ,
  • Jyh-Cheng Chen

      Affiliations

    • Department of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
    • ,
  • Fu-Shan Jaw

      Affiliations

    • Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author at: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan, ROC. Tel.: +886 2 3366 5266; fax: +886 2 2394 0049.

Received 31 May 2007; received in revised form 5 December 2007; accepted 12 December 2007. published online 13 February 2008.

Abstract 

Ketamine is one of the most commonly used anesthetics, but its effects on nociceptive responses are not clearly defined. This study used blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to hemodynamically map responses to formalin stimuli under ketamine anesthesia. All imaging was performed on a 4.7-T fMRI system. During dynamic image acquisition, formalin was injected into the rat hindpaw as a painful stimulant. Correlation coefficients were calculated, and each image was registered and fused with the corresponding rat brain atlas so as to avoid inaccuracies arising from manual definition of the brain area and to achieve atlas-based normalization among subjects. Formalin injections were found to increase BOLD signals in the cingulate cortex, sensory-motor cortices, insular cortex, striatum, nucleus accumbens, medial thalamus, ventrolateral thalamic group, and hippocampus. Moreover, in contrast to previous pain investigations, the frontal subcortical regions were strongly activated in ketamine-anesthetized rats.

Keywords: fMRI, Ketamine, Pain, Rat, Formalin

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PII: S1350-4533(07)00194-4

doi:10.1016/j.medengphy.2007.12.004

Medical Engineering & Physics
Volume 30, Issue 8 , Pages 953-958, October 2008

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