ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
Changing Balance of Spinal Cord Excitability and Nociceptive Brain Activity in Early Human Development.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- Non-pharmacological management of infant and young child procedural pain.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Birth experience in newborn infants is associated with changes in nociceptive sensitivity.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Electroencephalography during acute painful procedures in neonates: a scoping review.Pain reports · 2026Review
- Visceral Pain in Preterm Infants with Necrotizing Enterocolitis: Underlying Mechanisms and Implications for Treatment.Paediatric drugs · 2025Review
- Contextual factors associated with neonatal pain responses: clinical observational study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2025Article
- Establishing a standardised approach for the measurement of neonatal noxious-evoked brain activity in response to an acute somatic nociceptive heel lance stimulus.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2024Article
- Multisensory stimuli and pain perception in the newborn.Pediatric research · 2024Article
- Sensory event-related potential morphology predicts age in premature infants.Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2024Article
- Premature infants display discriminable behavioral, physiological, and brain responses to noxious and nonnoxious stimuli.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2022Article
- Early life inflammation is associated with spinal cord excitability and nociceptive sensitivity in human infants.Nature communications · 2022Article
- The development of descending serotonergic modulation of the spinal nociceptive network: a life span perspective.Pediatric research · 2022Review
- The impact of premature extrauterine exposure on infants' stimulus-evoked brain activity across multiple sensory systems.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2022Article
- Toward personalized medicine for pharmacological interventions in neonates using vital signs.Paediatric & neonatal pain · 2021Review
- Quantifying noxious-evoked baseline sensitivity in neonates to optimise analgesic trials.eLife · 2021Observational
- Multimodal pain assessment improves discrimination between noxious and non-noxious stimuli in infants.Paediatric & neonatal pain · 2019Article
- Nociception and the neonatal brain.Seminars in fetal & neonatal medicine · 2019Review
- Behavioural discrimination of noxious stimuli in infants is dependent on brain maturation.Pain · 2019Article
- Stroking modulates noxious-evoked brain activity in human infants.Current biology : CB · 2018Article
- EEG, behavioural and physiological recordings following a painful procedure in human neonates.Scientific data · 2018Article
- The influence of the descending pain modulatory system on infant pain-related brain activity.eLife · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In adults, nociceptive reflexes and behavioral responses are modulated by a network of brain regions via descending projections to the spinal dorsal horn [1]. Coordinated responses to noxious inputs manifest from a balance of descending facilitation and inhibition. In contrast, young infants display exaggerated and uncoordinated limb reflexes [2]. Our understanding of nociceptive processing in the infant brain has been advanced by the use of electrophysiological and hemodynamic imaging [3-6]. From approximately 35 weeks' gestation, nociceptive-specific patterns of brain activity emerge [7], whereas prior to this, non-specific bursts of activity occur in response to noxious, tactile, visual, and auditory stimulation [7-10]. During the preterm period, refinement of spinal cord excitability is also observed: reflex duration shortens, response threshold increases, and improved discrimination between tactile and noxious events occurs [2, 11, 12]. However, the development of descending modulation in human infants remains relatively unexplored. In 40 infants aged 28-42 weeks' gestation, we examined the relationship between nociceptive brain activity and spinal reflex withdrawal activity in response to a clinically essential noxious procedure. Nociceptive-specific brain activity increases in magnitude with gestational age, whereas reflex withdrawal activity decreases in magnitude, duration, and latency across the same developmental period. By recording brain and spinal cord activity in the same infants, we demonstrate that the maturation of nociceptive brain activity is concomitant with the refinement of noxious-evoked limb reflexes. We postulate that, consistent with studies in animals, infant reflexes are influenced by the development of top-down inhibitory modulation from maturing subcortical and cortical brain networks.
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Registered trials
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.