Title
Functional topography of the secondary somatosensory cortex for nonpainful and painful stimulation of median and tibial nerve: an fMRI study.
Abstract
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the cortical activity of the bilateral secondary somatosensory cortex (SII) during nonpainful (motor threshold) and painful electrical stimulation of median and tibial nerves. fMRI recordings were performed in eight normal young adults. The aim was at evaluating the working hypothesis of a spatial segregation of nonpainful and painful populations not only in the "hand" representation of SII [Ferretti, A., Babiloni, C., Del Gratta, C., Caulo, M., Tartaro, A., Bonomo, L., Rossini, P.M., Romani, G.L., 2003. Functional topography of the secondary somatosensory cortex for nonpainful and painful stimuli: an fMRI study. NeuroImage 20, 1625-1638.] but also in its "foot" representation. Results showed that, in both "hand" and "foot" representations of bilateral SII, the activity elicited by the painful stimulation was localized more posteriorly with respect to that elicited by the nonpainful stimulation. A fine spatial analysis of the SII responses revealed a clear somatotopic organization in the bilateral SII subregion especially reactive to the nonpainful stimuli (i.e., segregation of the hand and foot representations). In contrast, it was not possible to disentangle the "hand" and "foot" representations of SII for painful stimuli. These results extended to the SII "foot" representation previous evidence of a spatial segregation in the SII "hand" representation of subregions for the painful and nonpainful stimuli. Furthermore, they suggest that noxious information is not somatotopically represented in human bilateral SII, at least as inferred from fMRI data at 1.5 T.
Year
DOI
Venue
2004
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.08.003
NeuroImage
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),Median–tibial nerve electrical stimulation,Pain,Secondary somatosensory cortex (SII)
Journal
23
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
3
1053-8119
9
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.02
6
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
A Ferretti11039.98
Cosimo Del Gratta210011.08
C Babiloni38513.60
M Caulo4293.83
D Arienzo5161.87
A Tartaro6466.65
Paolo Maria Rossini791.02
Gian Luca Romani824325.02