The search result changed since you submitted your search request. Documents might be displayed in a different sort order.
  • search hit 9 of 43
Back to Result List

The human operculo-insular cortex is pain-preferentially but not pain-exclusively activated by trigeminal and olfactory stimuli

  • Increasing evidence about the central nervous representation of pain in the brain suggests that the operculo-insular cortex is a crucial part of the pain matrix. The pain-specificity of a brain region may be tested by administering nociceptive stimuli while controlling for unspecific activations by administering non-nociceptive stimuli. We applied this paradigm to nasal chemosensation, delivering trigeminal or olfactory stimuli, to verify the pain-specificity of the operculo-insular cortex. In detail, brain activations due to intranasal stimulation induced by non-nociceptive olfactory stimuli of hydrogen sulfide (5 ppm) or vanillin (0.8 ppm) were used to mask brain activations due to somatosensory, clearly nociceptive trigeminal stimulations with gaseous carbon dioxide (75% v/v). Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) images were recorded from 12 healthy volunteers in a 3T head scanner during stimulus administration using an event-related design. We found that significantly more activations following nociceptive than non-nociceptive stimuli were localized bilaterally in two restricted clusters in the brain containing the primary and secondary somatosensory areas and the insular cortices consistent with the operculo-insular cortex. However, these activations completely disappeared when eliminating activations associated with the administration of olfactory stimuli, which were small but measurable. While the present experiments verify that the operculo-insular cortex plays a role in the processing of nociceptive input, they also show that it is not a pain-exclusive brain region and allow, in the experimental context, for the interpretation that the operculo-insular cortex splay a major role in the detection of and responding to salient events, whether or not these events are nociceptive or painful.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Jörn LötschORCiDGND, Carmen Walter, Lisa Felden, Ulrike Nöth, Ralf DeichmannORCiD, Bruno Georg OertelGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-242934
DOI:https://doi.org/doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034798
ISSN:1932-6203
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22496865
Parent Title (English):PLoS One
Publisher:PLoS
Place of publication:Lawrence, Kan.
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2012/08/10
Date of first Publication:2012/04/05
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2012/08/10
Volume:7
Issue:4 : e34798
Page Number:10
HeBIS-PPN:307234193
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Fachübergreifende Einrichtungen / Zentrum für Arzneimittelforschung, Entwicklung und Sicherheit
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0