Graduation Semester and Year

2011

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering

Department

Bioengineering

First Advisor

Hanli Liu

Abstract

Perception of pain is multi-dimensional, comprising three major psychological dimensions: sensory-discriminative, motivational-affective and cognitive-evaluative. This dissertation study investigates the cognitive evaluation of pain, by acquiring functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopic (fNIRS) measurements from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) areas, during mechanical and thermal pain stimulation induced on the subject's volar forearm. Clustered-wise analysis on the oxy-hemoglobin (HbO) response from specific PFC areas was followed by categorizing the resulting HbO response into early (0.1-12sec) and late (12.1-25sec) phases. For each respective phase, regression analysis was carried between the HbO-derived parameters and behaviorally measured pain rating. The major findings of this study include: (1) across both 41°C and 48°C thermal stimulation, significant ΔHbO deactivation was observed during the late phase, in the left hemispheric (LH) anterior PFC (aPFC) or Brodmann area 10 (BA 10). (2) Significant correlates of pain rating were observed in the LH prefrontal areas: (a) under mechanical stimulation, early phase HbO-derived peak intensity (PI) from LH aPFC correlated with the pain rating. (b) Under both 41°C and 48°C thermal stimulation, late phase HbO-derived PI from the LH dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC or BA 46) showed correlation with the pain rating. (3) The significant correlates observed from the right hemispheric (RH) PFC were: (a) under mechanical stimulation, early phase HbO-derived FWHM from the RH aPFC correlated with the pain rating. (b) Under 41°C thermal stimulation, late phase HbO-derived PI from the RH DLPFC area correlated with the pain rating. (4) The late phase HbO-derived time to peak from LH aPFC reflected cognitive discrimination of two different pain levels (41°C and 48°C).The observed trend for ΔHbO activation and deactivation could possibly be due to synaptic-induced vasodilation and vasoconstriction leading to increased or decreased blood oxygenation to the localized PFC areas. Due to a limited subject pool, the findings listed above demand further corroboration.

Disciplines

Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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