ArticlePloS one2013
Analysis for distinctive activation patterns of pain and itchy in the human brain cortex measured using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Contralateral cerebral hemoglobin oxygen saturation changes in patients undergoing thoracotomy with general anesthesia with or without paravertebral block: a randomized controlled trial.Journal of anesthesia · 2017Trial
- Sweet taste stimulation reduced pain ratings associated with increased blood flow in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: A pilot study using NIRS.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2026Article
- Prefrontal Cortical Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Acute Pain Assessment in Infants: A Feasibility Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Cortical activity during painful and non-painful stimulation over four lower limb body sites: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The immediate effect of acupuncture on brain function in patients with chronic itch: a study protocol for an fNIRS investigation.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Functional Brain Changes Following Burn Injury: A Narrative Review.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2024Review
- A study based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy: Cortical responses to music interventions in patients with myofascial pain syndrome.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neuroimaging Assessment of Pain.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2022Review
- Effects of Tongue Pressure on Cerebral Blood Volume Dynamics: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Review
- Activation of the orbitofrontal cortex by both meditation and exercise: A near-infrared spectroscopy study.PloS one · 2021Article
- Pain relief associated with decreased oxyhemoglobin level in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.PloS one · 2021Article
- Longitudinal effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on knee osteoarthritis patients measured by functional infrared spectroscopy: a pilot study.Neurophotonics · 2020Article
- A Machine Learning Approach for the Identification of a Biomarker of Human Pain using fNIRS.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Functional Spectroscopy Mapping of Pain Processing Cortical Areas During Non-painful Peripheral Electrical Stimulation of the Accessory Spinal Nerve.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- A novel role of oxytocin: Oxytocin-induced well-being in humans.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2019Article
- Somatosensory Response to Trigeminal Stimulation: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) Study.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Brodmann area 10: Collating, integrating and high level processing of nociception and pain.Progress in neurobiology · 2018Review
- A Proposed Molecular Mechanism for Physical Analgesia in Chronic Pain.Neural plasticity · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pain and itch are closely related sensations, yet qualitatively quite distinct. Despite recent advances in brain imaging techniques, identifying the differences between pain and itch signals in the brain cortex is difficult due to continuous temporal and spatial changes in the signals. The high spatial resolution of positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has substantially advanced research of pain and itch, but these are uncomfortable because of expensiveness, importability and the limited operation in the shielded room. Here, we used near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which has more conventional usability. NIRS can be used to visualize dynamic changes in oxygenated hemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations in the capillary networks near activated neural circuits in real-time as well as fMRI. We observed distinct activation patterns in the frontal cortex for acute pain and histamine-induced itch. The prefrontal cortex exhibited a pain-related and itch-related activation pattern of blood flow in each subject. Although it looked as though that activation pattern for pain and itching was different in each subject, further cross correlation analysis of NIRS signals between each channels showed an overall agreement with regard to prefrontal area involvement. As a result, pain-related and itch-related blood flow responses (delayed responses in prefrontal area) were found to be clearly different between pain (τ = +18.7 sec) and itch (τ = +0.63 sec) stimulation. This is the first pilot study to demonstrate the temporal and spatial separation of a pain-induced blood flow and an itch-induced blood flow in human cortex during information processing.
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