Journal of magnetic resonance imaging : JMRI
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the brain processing of capsaicin-induced painful stimulation in the alpha-chloralose anesthetized rat. Experiments were performed on a 9.4-T magnet (Magnex, UK) with Avance console (Bruker, Germany) using a surface coil tuned to 400.5 MHz centred over the rat forebrain. Gradient-echo images of two slices, with an echo time of 25 msec, repetition time of 70 msec, and 50 repetitions, were acquired per experiment. ⋯ There was a substantial initial increase in activation in regions of the brain associated with pain and there was a trend towards increasing activation with repeated stimulations. Treatment with morphine (3 mg/kg, intravenously) was found to substantially reduce, if not completely eliminate, the areas of functional activation associated with physiologic pain (anterior cingulate and frontal cortex) after C-nociceptor stimulation with capsaicin (N = 6). FMRI involving capsaicin-induced painful stimulation could prove to be an effective tool for the study of novel analgesics and the central nervous system processing of pain.