An fMRI study of the anterior cingulate cortex and surrounding medial wall activations evoked by noxious cutaneous heat and cold stimuli

摘要: The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and adjacent regions in the medial wall have been implicated sensory, motor cognitive processes, including pain. Our previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies demonstrated pain-related activation of posterior portion ACC during transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) variable patterns cortical with innocuous noxious thermal stimuli individual subjects. present study represents companion paper to our recent pain- thermal-related activations aim use fMRI delineate surrounding application as well performance a task Ten normal subjects were imaged on conventional 1.5 T GE 'echospeed' system. Functional images obtained from sagittal sections through each hemisphere centered at approximately 3-5 7-9 mm midline. Each subject was (cool, warm) (cold, hot) thenar eminence, execution (sequential finger-thumb opposition) task. Task-related mostly confined contralateral ipsilateral images. Although results demonstrate intersubject variability task-related activations, some general modality-specific apparent: (i) located mainly ACC; (ii) primarily ACC, ventral supplementary area (SMA); (iii) motor-related SMA dorsal ACC. These indicate that specific spatial exist within for stimuli, thermal- appear be segregated Therefore, we propose segregation into an non-specific attention/arousal system pain