Evidence map›Paper›PMID 16597720›Full record

Trial reportThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2006

Cortical pain responses in human infants.

Rebeccah Slater, Anne Cantarella, Shiromi Gallella, Alan Worley, Stewart Boyd, Judith Meek, Maria Fitzgerald

Open access · bronzeAbstract readClinical Trial
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Trial report in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 121 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
121citing papers in PubMed, 5 pooled it
43.0field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

121 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 447 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Acupuncture for procedural pain in newborn infants.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025
    Pooled it
  2. Sucrose analgesia for heel-lance procedures in neonates.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023
    Pooled it
  3. Pooled it
  4. Sucrose for analgesia in newborn infants undergoing painful procedures.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2016
    Pooled it
  5. Guideline
  6. Trial
  7. Trial
  8. Oxidative Stress as a Physiological Pain Response in Full-Term Newborns.Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity · 2017
    Trial
  9. Trial
  10. Trial
  11. Trial
  12. Fetal Pain Perception:Annals of the Child Neurology Society · 2026
    Review
  13. Review
  14. Article
  15. Review
  16. Article
  17. Review
  18. Article
  19. Review
  20. A comparison of the effect of procedural pain on cerebral oxygen saturation between late preterm and term infants.Journal of perinatology : official journal of the California Perinatal Association · 2024
    Article

61 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Rebeccah SlaterThe London Pain Consortium, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. r.slater@ucl.ac.uk
Anne Cantarella
Shiromi Gallella
Alan Worley
Stewart Boyd
Judith Meek
Maria Fitzgerald
Great Ormond Street Hospital · GBUniversity College London · GB

Funding

Medical Research Council G0502146Wellcome Trust
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Despite the recent increase in our understanding of the development of pain processing, it is still not known whether premature infants are capable of processing pain at a cortical level. In this study, changes in cerebral oxygenation over the somatosensory cortex were measured in response to noxious stimulation using real-time near-infrared spectroscopy in 18 infants aged between 25 and 45 weeks postmenstrual age. The noxious stimuli were heel lances performed for routine blood sampling; no blood tests were performed solely for the purpose of the study. Noxious stimulation produced a clear cortical response, measured as an increase in total hemoglobin concentration [HbT] in the contralateral somatosensory cortex, from 25 weeks (mean Delta[HbT] = 7.74 micromol/L; SE, 1.10). Cortical responses were significantly greater in awake compared with sleeping infants, with a mean difference of 6.63 micromol/L [95% confidence interval (CI) limits: 2.35, 10.91 micromol/L; mean age, 35.2 weeks]. In awake infants, the response in the contralateral somatosensory cortex increased with age (regression coefficient, 0.698 micromol/L/week; 95% CI limits: 0.132, 1.265 micromol/L/week) and the latency decreased with age (regression coefficient, -0.9861 micromol/L/week; 95% CI limits: -1.5361, -0.4361 micromol/L/week; age range, 25-38 weeks). The response was modality specific because no response was detected after non-noxious stimulation of the heel, even when accompanied by reflex withdrawal of the foot. We conclude that noxious information is transmitted to the preterm infant cortex from 25 weeks, highlighting the potential for both higher-level pain processing and pain-induced plasticity in the human brain from a very early age.

Indexed as

Evoked Potentials, SomatosensoryBrain MappingFemaleHumansInfant, NewbornInfant, PrematureMaleOxygenPainPhysical StimulationSomatosensory CortexOxygen

Identifiers

PMID16597720
PMCPMC6674141
OpenAlexW2036193957

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.